Canonical has released version 1.16 of the multipass toolkit, aimed at simplifying the installation of various versions of Ubuntu in virtual machines running on Linux, Windows, and macOS virtualization systems. This release is notable for the full opening of the project's codebase — the repository now includes code for operating in Windows and macOS, which was previously not publicly available. The project code is written in C++ and distributed under the GPLv3 license. A snap package is prepared for quick installation of multipass on Ubuntu.
Multipass allows a developer to launch the desired version of Ubuntu with a single command without additional configuration in virtual machine, for example, for experiments or testing their application's functionality. KVM or VirtualBox is used to launch the virtual machine in Linux, Hyper-V in Windows, and HyperKit in macOS. It supports operation in distributions like Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, elementary OS, Fedora, KDE Neon, Kubuntu, Manjaro, Pop!_OS, openSUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Raspberry Pi OS.
The toolkit automatically retrieves the necessary operating system image and keeps it up to date. Cloud-init can be used for configuration. It allows for both mounting disk partitions in the virtual environment (using the command 'multipass mount') and transferring individual files between the host system and the virtual machine (using the command 'multipass transfer'). There is complete integration of the installed virtual machine with the main desktop (application icons, system menu, and notifications are added).
Key Changes:
- The ability to run custom images in macOS and Windows has been provided, of virtual machines, using links to a local (file://) or external file (https://).
- The graphical interface for managing virtual machines and interacting with multipass services has been modernized. The ability to launch a virtual machine using the configuration applied to another virtual machine has been added. The terminal now supports output scaling (Ctrl + '+', Ctrl + '-', Ctrl + '0').
- On Linux hosts with ARM architecture, support for launch using QEMU has been implemented.
- The ability to launch a virtual machine with the 'Open shell' button has been added.
- Window size preservation has been ensured, and the selection of default window sizes has been improved.
- Clipboard data transfer support has been enhanced.
- gRPC is used for encrypting traffic.
- The drivers for launching systems using LXD and libvirt have been classified as deprecated. These drivers will be removed in the next version.
Source: opennet.ru
