How to create an Ubuntu virtual machine with Multipass

Multipass is a tool for quickly running an Ubuntu virtual machine from any host operating system. It allows you to obtain an instance of Linux on your Windows or macOS machine, or to create a fully-isolated instance of Linux on your existing Linux.

To install Multipass on Linux, Windows, or macOS, follow the instructions provided at multipass.run.

To use Multipass to create a virtual machine microcloud with 8 GB RAM allocated to it, execute:

multipass launch -n microcloud -m 8g -c 2 -d 20G 

Multipass will confirm the creation of the microcloud virtual machine:

Launched: microcloud

Multipass will then also download the latest Long Term Support version of the Ubuntu operating system. Once that is done, to use Multipass to access your newly created microcloud Ubuntu virtual machine via the command-line interface, execute:

multipass shell microcloud

If this is successful, you should see the following (or similar, depending on the version installed):

ubuntu@microcloud:~$

To use your newly created Ubuntu, all you have to do is type commands in this shell.

Once you are done, if you would like to remove any trace of your microcloud Ubuntu virtual machine, simply run:

$ multipass delete microcloud

To remove all traces of the steps you’ve followed in this guide, also uninstall Multipass.