Lima Lima-VM

containerd containers docker kubernetes linux qemu virtual-machine virtualization wsl2

Use this command to install Lima:

winget install --id=Lima.Lima -e

Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing, port forwarding, and support for both QEMU and WSL2 backends (similar to WSL2).

[🌎Web site] [📖Documentation] [👤Slack (#lima)]

Lima: Linux Machines

Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2).

The original goal of Lima was to promote containerd including nerdctl (contaiNERD ctl) to Mac users, but Lima can be used for non-container applications as well.

Lima also supports other container engines (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, etc.) and non-macOS hosts (Linux, NetBSD, etc.).

Getting started

Set up (Homebrew):

brew install lima
limactl start

To run Linux commands:

lima uname -a

To run containers with containerd:

lima nerdctl run --rm hello-world

To run containers with Docker:

limactl start template:docker
export DOCKER_HOST=$(limactl list docker --format 'unix://{{.Dir}}/sock/docker.sock')
docker run --rm hello-world

To run containers with Kubernetes:

limactl start template:k8s
export KUBECONFIG=$(limactl list k8s --format 'unix://{{.Dir}}/copied-from-guest/kubeconfig.yaml')
kubectl apply -f ...

See for the further information.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on:

Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO): All commits must be signed off with git commit -s
Code licensing and pull request guidelines
Testing requirements

Community

Adopters

Container environments:

Rancher Desktop: Kubernetes and container management to the desktop
Colima: Docker (and Kubernetes) on macOS with minimal setup
Finch: Finch is a command line client for local container development
Podman Desktop: Podman Desktop GUI has a plug-in for Lima virtual machines

GUI:

Lima xbar plugin: xbar plugin to start/stop VMs from the menu bar and see their running status.
lima-gui: Qt GUI for Lima

Communication channels

GitHub Discussions
#lima channel in the CNCF Slack
- New account:
- Login:
Zoom meetings (tentatively monthly)
- Meeting notes & agenda proposals: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/discussions/categories/meetings
- Calendar: https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/lima

Social media accounts

Code of Conduct

Lima follows the CNCF Code of Conduct.

We are a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubating project.

The Linux Foundation® (TLF) has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of TLF trademarks, see Trademark Usage.