Lima: Linux Machines
Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2).
✅ Automatic file sharing
✅ Automatic port forwarding
✅ Built-in support for containerd (Other container engines can be used too)
✅ Intel on Intel
✅ ARM on ARM
✅ Various guest Linux distributions: AlmaLinux, Alpine, Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Oracle Linux, Rocky, Ubuntu (default), …
Related project: sshocker (ssh with file sharing and port forwarding)
This project is unrelated to The Lima driver project (driver for ARM Mali GPUs).
Project history
Lima began in May 2021, aiming at promoting containerd including nerdctl (contaiNERD ctl) to Mac users. Later the project scope was expanded to support other containers and non-container applications as well. Lima also supports non-macOS hosts (Linux, NetBSD, etc.).
Lima joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in September 2022 as a Sandbox project. The project was promoted to the Incubating level in October 2025.