Installing Multipass on Linux

Multipass for Linux is published as a snap package, available on the Snap Store. Thanks to that it’s available for most major Linux distributions. Once you have snaps running on your distribution installing Multipass is as easy as:

$ snap install multipass --classic

For architectures other than amd64, you’ll need the beta channel at the moment.

You can also use the edge channel to get the latest development build:

$ snap install multipass --edge --classic

Make sure you’re part of the group that Multipass gives write access to its socket (sudo in this case, but it may also be adm or admin, depending on your distribution):

$ ls -l /var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket
srw-rw---- 1 root sudo 0 Dec 19 09:47 /var/snap/multipass/common/multipass_socket
$ groups | grep sudo
adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin

You can check some details about the snap with the snap info command:

$ snap info multipass
name:      multipass
summary:   Ubuntu at your fingertips
publisher: Canonical✓
license:   unset
description: |
  Multipass gives you Ubuntu VMs in seconds. Just run `multipass launch` and it'll do all the setup
  for you. Check out `multipass find` for a list of available images. More details you can find
  under `multipass help`.
commands:
  - multipass
  - multipass.virsh
services:
  multipass.libvirt-bin: simple, enabled, inactive
  multipass.multipassd:  simple, enabled, active
snap-id:      mA11087v6dR3IEcQLgICQVjuvhUUBUKM
tracking:     beta
refresh-date: today at 10:45 CEST
channels:                                     
  stable:    –                                
  candidate: –                                
  beta:      2018.10.1            (461) 104MB classic
  edge:      2018.10.1-3-g3dd85ff (464) 105MB classic
installed:   2018.10.1            (461) 104MB classic

Once installed, you can use multipass launch to create your first instance. Have a look at Working with instances to get started!