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Boost your development environment with Ubuntu Multipass

48 points by indigodaddy 2y ago

fibers 2y ago
how well does this work with gpu support for PyTorch for example? I am stuck in dependency management hell on my regular ubuntu box.
- indigodaddy 2y ago
  Appears perhaps not unless things have changed or feature added since this: https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/2503 https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/2503
  - fibers 2y ago
    good to know!
sbuttgereit 2y ago
Interesting.... I'm on Windows with WSL2 for most of my technical work. This looks the underlying technology is going to be pretty similar, except that I get something of a management console for multiple instances. Now I also use applications with WSLg, so I wonder how far Multipass really goes or if its just for spinning up headless server like instances.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  My experience with WSl2 is not great so far. There seems to be some memory management process in Windows that starts eating enormous amounts of cpu cycles for long periods at inconvenient times. This does not happen when I run the same setup in a same distro on the same hardware and Windows installation under Hyper-V.
  - andai 2y ago
    Is this process part of Windows or WSL? In my experience Windows itself (without WSL) loves eating my CPU at its earliest convenience, even waking up my (unplugged) laptop from sleep for a chance to do so... (see recent HN thread)
    - PeterStuer 2y ago
      It is a windows process. As for the waking up, there is a setting somewhere in power options that you can set to disallow programs to schedule machine starts (even when the PC is fully shut down). Sadly, Windows ships with allow wakeups by default.
justusthane 2y ago
Seems odd that the post mentions Docker and Virtualbox as alternatives, when it seems Vagrant would be the most similar comparison (and is more flexible than this, as it’s not constrained to Ubuntu hosts).
- moondev 2y ago
  Multipass is better than vagrant in my opinion because it supports cloud-init which is the most portable and flexible way to bootstrap a server. Multipass also supports any qcow2 machine image, both from filesystem or http that has cloud-init, not just Ubuntu. This is the case on Linux not sure if this is still a limitation on macOS. Also it's a replacement for docker desktop because it can proxy command line aliases into the machines. So you can run docker inside multipass and have docker cli route there even if docker cli is not installed on host.
  - nijave 2y ago
    Vagrant also supports cloud init. Multipass is only packaged as a snap which is a bit inconvenient on certain platforms (coworker didn't want to mess with it on their Arch system)
    - moondev 2y ago
      FYI there is an unofficial package in aur that I prefer as well to snap Note there is a minor tweak needed after install to put efi firmware in spot where it looks https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/3441 https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/3441 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/canonical-multipass https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/canonical-multipass
    - stavros 2y ago
      Hell, I don't want to mess with it on my Ubuntu system, I remove it because it just feels dirty. It feels like it spreads its tentacles everywhere, it's opaque, and it's slow.
- dakiol 2y ago
antman 2y ago
Is this like docker where one can run hundreds or like a full vm where one can run two or three? Mentions both in the article.
- indigodaddy 2y ago
  Believe under the hood it uses hyperv with the option to use virtualbox instead (at least for the Win version)
- moondev 2y ago
  Depends how much RAM CPU and disk your host has. You specify those allocations per vm
el_snark 2y ago
Seems quite similar to LXC. Would be interested in seeing how the two compare.
- moondev 2y ago
  LXC requires Linux. So you can actually use multipass to run LXC on macOS and Windows. I believe that was actually one of the main motivators for the multipass project. It's also my theory that orbstack on macOS works like this
gostsamo 2y ago
Using this at work. Not bad, but on my Windows11 amd64 machine has issues starting, losing its assigned ip and freezes mid execution of network tasks. Haven't discovered why yet, but there is not much love lost between us.
computatrum 2y ago
It is used for building snap packages since some years and it worked most times but was not fully stable yet. Few times I had issues where I needed to restart the multipass daemon or even the host system.
antifarben 2y ago
Over the past decade or so I used Vagrant for these things. And Vagrant also integrates well for provisioning scripts. Is there anything that I'm missing out if I stay with Vagrant?
- pfcd 2y ago
  Not much. But I heard a lot that it is way more stable and reliable. Since they are not working on multiple providers like Vagrant does (VMWare, VBox...) every function works without a complaint. It is undeniably a great way to spin up Ubuntu VMs. It has cloud-init too. So I don't think you'll be missing something from Vagrant.
- nijave 2y ago
  I think it's a little simpler than Vagrant (iirc you can do everything from the command line versus a Vagrantfile)
- dakiol 2y ago
  I used to use vagrant and virtual box on apple. With silicone ones I switched to vmware, but the dev experience is far from good. Qemu is what works best. Multipass is a nice wrapper around qemu.
grayman967 2y ago
[flagged]
greatgib 2y ago
If the thing is based on snap, it is a total no go for me.
- pfcd 2y ago
  Could you elaborate on that? How exactly snaps are a "no go"?
  - eddyg 2y ago
    I also don’t understand the snap hate. They’re dependency-included packages.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

48 points by indigodaddy 2y ago

how well does this work with gpu support for PyTorch for example? I am stuck in dependency management hell on my regular ubuntu box.

indigodaddy 2y ago
Appears perhaps not unless things have changed or feature added since this: https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/2503 https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/2503
- fibers 2y ago
  good to know!

sbuttgereit 2y ago

Interesting.... I'm on Windows with WSL2 for most of my technical work. This looks the underlying technology is going to be pretty similar, except that I get something of a management console for multiple instances. Now I also use applications with WSLg, so I wonder how far Multipass really goes or if its just for spinning up headless server like instances.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
PeterStuer 2y ago
My experience with WSl2 is not great so far. There seems to be some memory management process in Windows that starts eating enormous amounts of cpu cycles for long periods at inconvenient times. This does not happen when I run the same setup in a same distro on the same hardware and Windows installation under Hyper-V.
- andai 2y ago
  Is this process part of Windows or WSL? In my experience Windows itself (without WSL) loves eating my CPU at its earliest convenience, even waking up my (unplugged) laptop from sleep for a chance to do so... (see recent HN thread)
  - PeterStuer 2y ago
    It is a windows process. As for the waking up, there is a setting somewhere in power options that you can set to disallow programs to schedule machine starts (even when the PC is fully shut down). Sadly, Windows ships with allow wakeups by default.

justusthane 2y ago

Seems odd that the post mentions Docker and Virtualbox as alternatives, when it seems Vagrant would be the most similar comparison (and is more flexible than this, as it’s not constrained to Ubuntu hosts).

moondev 2y ago
Multipass is better than vagrant in my opinion because it supports cloud-init which is the most portable and flexible way to bootstrap a server. Multipass also supports any qcow2 machine image, both from filesystem or http that has cloud-init, not just Ubuntu. This is the case on Linux not sure if this is still a limitation on macOS. Also it's a replacement for docker desktop because it can proxy command line aliases into the machines. So you can run docker inside multipass and have docker cli route there even if docker cli is not installed on host.
- nijave 2y ago
  Vagrant also supports cloud init. Multipass is only packaged as a snap which is a bit inconvenient on certain platforms (coworker didn't want to mess with it on their Arch system)
  - moondev 2y ago
    FYI there is an unofficial package in aur that I prefer as well to snap Note there is a minor tweak needed after install to put efi firmware in spot where it looks https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/3441 https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/3441 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/canonical-multipass https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/canonical-multipass
  - stavros 2y ago
    Hell, I don't want to mess with it on my Ubuntu system, I remove it because it just feels dirty. It feels like it spreads its tentacles everywhere, it's opaque, and it's slow.
dakiol 2y ago

antman 2y ago

Is this like docker where one can run hundreds or like a full vm where one can run two or three? Mentions both in the article.

indigodaddy 2y ago
Believe under the hood it uses hyperv with the option to use virtualbox instead (at least for the Win version)
moondev 2y ago
Depends how much RAM CPU and disk your host has. You specify those allocations per vm

el_snark 2y ago

Seems quite similar to LXC. Would be interested in seeing how the two compare.

moondev 2y ago
LXC requires Linux. So you can actually use multipass to run LXC on macOS and Windows. I believe that was actually one of the main motivators for the multipass project. It's also my theory that orbstack on macOS works like this

gostsamo 2y ago

Using this at work. Not bad, but on my Windows11 amd64 machine has issues starting, losing its assigned ip and freezes mid execution of network tasks. Haven't discovered why yet, but there is not much love lost between us.

computatrum 2y ago

It is used for building snap packages since some years and it worked most times but was not fully stable yet. Few times I had issues where I needed to restart the multipass daemon or even the host system.

antifarben 2y ago

Over the past decade or so I used Vagrant for these things. And Vagrant also integrates well for provisioning scripts. Is there anything that I'm missing out if I stay with Vagrant?

pfcd 2y ago
Not much. But I heard a lot that it is way more stable and reliable. Since they are not working on multiple providers like Vagrant does (VMWare, VBox...) every function works without a complaint. It is undeniably a great way to spin up Ubuntu VMs. It has cloud-init too. So I don't think you'll be missing something from Vagrant.
nijave 2y ago
I think it's a little simpler than Vagrant (iirc you can do everything from the command line versus a Vagrantfile)
dakiol 2y ago
I used to use vagrant and virtual box on apple. With silicone ones I switched to vmware, but the dev experience is far from good. Qemu is what works best. Multipass is a nice wrapper around qemu.

grayman967 2y ago

[flagged]

greatgib 2y ago

If the thing is based on snap, it is a total no go for me.

pfcd 2y ago
Could you elaborate on that? How exactly snaps are a "no go"?
- eddyg 2y ago
  I also don’t understand the snap hate. They’re dependency-included packages.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]