UTM (macOS Apple Silicon)

Note: AstLinux 1.5.10 or later is recommended

VM Host Specifications: UTM macOS

AstLinux Board Type:

“genx86_64-vm” (VGA video console)

VM Guest Recommended Options:

Memory: 1024 MB
CPU: QEMU Virtual CPU version 2.5+ (qemu64-v1)
CPU Cores: 2 Processor Cores
Virtual Storage: 4 to 8 GB
Network: Bridged (Advanced)
Emulated Network Card: virtio-net-pci

Configuration:

AstLinux now runs fine (though a bit slower) as an emulated x86_64 guest VM in UTM on Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and newer).

As tested, AstLinux 1.5.10 VM ISO, using UTM 4.6 on macOS 14.7.4, M2 Mac Mini.

Start Custom -> Emulate -> Custom Other

As typical, the genx86_64-vm.iso installer needs UEFI unchecked to install, but UEFI can be later enabled if desired.

QEMU -> Tweaks -> UEFI Boot

Cool for testing, the Drive [1] and be IDE/SCSI (/dev/sda), VirtIO (/dev/vda) or NVMe (/dev/nvme0n1) supported in AstLinux. Changeable at any time.

Optional, ALERT_SOUNDS works with:

Sound -> Emulated Audio Card: PC Speaker

/mnt/kd/rc.conf.d/user.conf

ALERT_SOUNDS="startup shutdown"  # Optional Sounds
ALERT_SOUNDS_OCTAVE="0"

Note: May only work with the “Internal Mac speaker”.

The 'pi' performance test [2] takes 31 seconds, about twice as fast as the PC Engines APU2. Possibly macOS 15 offers additional emulation improvements.

[1]

[2]

time ( echo "scale=3456; 4*a(1)" | bc -l )