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Guest OS

1 - Linux

Linux is the default guest operating system.

Plain mode

Plain mode applies fully to Linux guests: filesystem mounts, dynamic port forwarding, the built-in containerd, and the guest agent daemon are all disabled.

See also

2 - macOS

⚡ RequirementLima >= 2.1, macOS, ARM

Running macOS guests is experimentally supported since Lima v2.1.

limactl start template:macos

limactl start template:homebrew-macos

The user password is randomly generated and stored in the ~/password file in the VM. Consider changing it after the first login.

limactl shell macos cat /Users/${USER}.guest/password

Difference from Linux guests

  • Password login is enabled
  • Password-less sudo is disabled, except for /sbin/shutdown -h now (see Sudo — this is not currently configurable on macOS)
  • Several features are not implemented yet. See Caveats below.

Caveats

  • No support for turning off the video display.
  • No support for automatic port forwarding. Use ssh -L to manually set up port forwarding, or, use the vzNAT network to access the guest by its IP.
  • No support for installing custom caCerts

Plain mode

containerd and automatic port forwarding are not available on macOS guests regardless of the mode, so plain mode additionally disables only the host directory mounts.

3 - Windows

⚡ RequirementLima >= 2.2, QEMU, swtpm

Running Windows guests is experimentally supported since Lima v2.2.

limactl start template:windows

limactl start template:windows-2025

The user password is randomly generated and stored in the %USERPROFILE%\password.txt file in the VM. Consider changing it after the first login.

By default, Windows 11 enables Trusted Platform Module (TPM) emulation because of the hardware requirement. However, you can turn it off (in that case, lima bypasses the hardware check). In order to use TPM emulation, you need to install swtpm on your host computer.

For Windows server 2025, TPM emulation is disabled by default. However, there are some benefits if you enable TPM emulation. For example, you can install BitLocker disk encryption on your VM.

Difference from Linux guests

  • Several features are not implemented yet. See Caveats below.

Caveats

  • For Windows 11 guest, you need to download the installer ISO manually from here
  • QEMU is the only VM driver that supports Windows guests
  • Only plain mode is supported (no file mount, no dynamic port-forwarding)
  • Booting Windows 11 may occasionally fail. If it fails, please delete the instance and try it again from scratch.
  • Booting Windows 11 usually takes longer than default timeout (10 minutes). Please consider extending the timeout.(example: --timeout=30m)

4 - FreeBSD

⚡ RequirementLima >= 2.1

Running FreeBSD guests is experimentally supported since Lima v2.1.

limactl start template:freebsd-15

limactl start template:experimental/freebsd-16

Prerequisites:

  • QEMU
  • xorriso (on non-macOS hosts)

Difference from Linux guests

  • Several features are not implemented yet. See Caveats below.

Caveats

  • No support for automatic port forwarding. Use ssh -L to manually set up port forwarding.
  • No support for installing custom caCerts
  • And more

FreeBSD prior to 15.1

  • No support for mounting host directories. Use limactl cp or limactl shell --sync to share files with the host.

Plain mode

The guest agent, containerd, and automatic port forwarding are not available on FreeBSD guests regardless of the mode, so plain mode additionally disables only the host directory mounts (on FreeBSD 15.1 and later).