Lima
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 19 virtual machine tools by recommenders
Free tool for running Linux virtual machines on Mac and Linux, often used as a Vagrant replacement or for quick throwaway VMs. Caveat: defaults and folder mounting may not suit everyone.
Free tool for running Linux virtual machines on Mac and Linux, often used as a Vagrant replacement or for quick throwaway VMs. Caveat: defaults and folder mounting may not suit everyone.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 91%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 10 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works well on Mac and Linux
“Lima works cross-platform leveraging native virtualisation or containerisation, and has some useful capabilities for using agents.”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Grok uploaded my user directory to xAI's servers” “It works great there's no reason to use distro specific tooling”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Homebrew 7.0.0” “to make it painless. Works on Mac and Linux”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “OpenShell – A safe, private runtime for fleets of autonomous AI agents” - Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”
Quick, lightweight temporary VMs
“Lima is a great tool for simple quick or for automated repeatable virtual environments!”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more "Docker for VMs"” “has worked well for spinning up (temporary) VM's quick”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian” “quick headless local VMs where you can mount a folder”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Don't run OpenClaw on your main machine” - Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “OpenShell – A safe, private runtime for fleets of autonomous AI agents”
Isolated workspace for running agents
“good old VMs can really provide the needed isolation while still having good UX”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack” “I regularly use a Lima VM as a VSCode remote workspace to run yolo agents in.”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents” Easy to automate repeatable setups
“Lima is a great tool for simple quick or for automated repeatable virtual environments!”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more "Docker for VMs"” “Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Claude Cowork Runs Linux VM via Apple Virtualization Framework”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Folder mounting limited or risky
“it does a few weird/dangerous things like mounting the entire user directory read/write”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)” “I wasn't able to find a way to mount the CWD except for certain subdirectories.”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Don't YOLO your file system”
Other virtual machine tools people recommend
The four most recommended other virtual machine tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QEMU | 114 | 42 | 73% | 12 | 16 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| UTM | 49 | 11 | 82% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| VirtualBox | 34 | 33 | 51% | 12 | 18 yrs3 owners | — |
| LimaThis page | 31 | 3 | 91% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Parallels Desktop | 26 | 13 | 67% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
36 of the 40 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“seems perfectly fine and lightweight to me”
“I use a ton, and it’s been great.”
“to make it painless. Works on Mac and Linux”
“the peace of mind is worth it”
“Lima Machines worked well too, and I don't remember it being annoying.”
“It works great there's no reason to use distro specific tooling”
“Lima is a great tool for simple quick or for automated repeatable virtual environments!”
“There are many good options for this”
“I can have a VMWare VM, Lima and an IDE”
“Lima works cross-platform leveraging native virtualisation or containerisation, and has some useful capabilities for using agents.”
“has worked well for spinning up (temporary) VM's quick”
“People have been using Orbstack, Lima and Docker long before Apple shipped first-party container tooling.”
“Lima supports the latter as well”
“We've used LIMA for now, was too much of a hussle.”
“Otherwise works great for me.”
“I find that it works very well in practice despite not being first-party”
“If you want a full VM, I would recommend Lima/Colima.”
“I think your usecase better fit with Lima”
“that doesn't work well in development”
“I wasn't able to find a way to mount the CWD except for certain subdirectories.”
“If you're on linux and have kvm, there's Lima and Colima too.”
“I've just switched to lima”
“throw the spec into openai codex inside limactl (get it from GitHub)”
“Lima is more or less the equivalent of WSL for Macs.”
“I have been running headless VMs with Lima and VZ for a while now with absolutely zero problems”
“I regularly use a Lima VM as a VSCode remote workspace to run yolo agents in.”
“It works flawlessly and has been a replacement for Vagrant for me for some time.”
“quick headless local VMs where you can mount a folder”
“It is very nice but the defaults are not what I want”
“I built a small CLI that wraps lima to make my life easier.”
“it does a few weird/dangerous things like mounting the entire user directory read/write”
“it's great for narrowly-scoped use cases like this.”
“wsl2-like access to a virtual machine”
“Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with”
“good old VMs can really provide the needed isolation while still having good UX”
“or just running a Linux VM in Lima”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.