Canonical published Multipass 1.14 tools aimed at simplifying the installation of different versions of Ubuntu in virtual machines across Linux, Windows, and MacOS virtualization systems. With Multipass, developers can easily start their desired version of Ubuntu in a virtual machine using a single command, making it convenient for experiments or testing application functionalities. The virtual machines are launched using KVM in Linux, Hyper-V in Windows, and Hyperkit in MacOS. It also supports Virtualbox virtual machines. The project code is written in C++ and distributed under the GPLV3 license. To quickly install Multipass on Ubuntu, use the snap package.
Multipass automatically fetches the required OS image and keeps it up to date. Cloud-Init can be utilized for configuration. Users can mount disk partitions in the virtual environment (“Multipass Mount”) and transfer files between the host system and the virtual machine (“Multipass Transfer”). It offers full integration of the virtual machine with the main desktop, adding applications, system menu, and notifications.
The key changes in Multipass 1.14 include:
- Added a graphical interface for easier management of virtual machines.
- Enabled the option to add an external network bridge to existing virtual machines.
- Introduced a “Multipass Stop –force” command to forcefully stop virtual machine instances.
- VirtualBox backend now supports snapshots, previously available only for Qemu and Hyper-V.
- Implemented additional restrictions when mounting directories from host systems to guest systems to prevent intersecting user IDs.
- Reduced snap package size by 48% (from 122MB to 64MB).
- Switched from using GRPC to the Poco library in VCPKG assembly.