Colima (third-party project)

“How does Lima relate to Colima?”

Colima is a third-party project that wraps Lima to provide an alternative user experience for launching containers.

The key difference is that Colima launches Docker by default, while Lima launches containerd by default.

Container	Lima	Colima
containerd	`limactl start`	`colima start --runtime=containerd`
Docker	`limactl start template://docker`	`colima start`
Podman	`limactl start template://podman`	-
Kubernetes (k3s)	`limactl start template://k3s`	`colima start --kubernetes`
Kubernetes (kubeadm)	`limactl start template://k8s`	-

The colima CLI is similar to the limactl CLI, but there are subtle differences:

Configuration	Lima	Colima
CPUs	`limactl start --cpus=4`	`colima start --cpu=4`
Reverse SSHFS	`limactl start --mount-type=reverse-sshfs`	`colima start --mount-type=sshfs`
Rosetta	`limactl start --rosetta`	`colima start --vz-rosetta`
Access to VM by IP	`limactl start --network=lima:shared`	`colima start --network-address`