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 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 )