Virtualisation - multipass
Multipass is the recommended method for creating Ubuntu VMs on Ubuntu. It’s designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command, and it works on Linux, Windows and macOS.
On Linux it’s available as a snap:
sudo snap install multipass
Find available images
To find available images you can use the multipass find command, which will produce a list like this:
Image Aliases Version Description
snapcraft:core18 18.04 20201111 Snapcraft builder for Core 18
snapcraft:core20 20.04 20210921 Snapcraft builder for Core 20
snapcraft:core22 22.04 20220426 Snapcraft builder for Core 22
snapcraft:devel 20221128 Snapcraft builder for the devel series
core core16 20200818 Ubuntu Core 16
core18 20211124 Ubuntu Core 18
18.04 bionic 20221117 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04 focal 20221115.1 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
22.04 jammy,lts 20221117 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
22.10 kinetic 20221101 Ubuntu 22.10
daily:23.04 devel,lunar 20221127 Ubuntu 23.04
appliance:adguard-home 20200812 Ubuntu AdGuard Home Appliance
appliance:mosquitto 20200812 Ubuntu Mosquitto Appliance
appliance:nextcloud 20200812 Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance
appliance:openhab 20200812 Ubuntu openHAB Home Appliance
appliance:plexmediaserver 20200812 Ubuntu Plex Media Server Appliance
anbox-cloud-appliance latest Anbox Cloud Appliance
charm-dev latest A development and testing environment for charmers
docker latest A Docker environment with Portainer and related tools
jellyfin latest Jellyfin is a Free Software Media System that puts you in control of managing and streaming your media.
minikube latest minikube is local Kubernetes
Launch a fresh instance of the current Ubuntu LTS
$ multipass launch ubuntu
Launched: cleansing-guanaco
Check out the running instances
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
cleansing-guanaco Running 10.140.26.17 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Learn more about the VM instance you just launched
$ multipass info cleansing-guanaco
Name: cleansing-guanaco
State: Running
IPv4: 10.140.26.17
Release: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Image hash: dc5b5a43c267 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
Load: 0.45 0.19 0.07
Disk usage: 1.4G out of 4.7G
Memory usage: 168.3M out of 969.5M
Mounts: --
Connect to a running instance
$ multipass shell cleansing-guanaco
Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64)
(...)
$
Don’t forget to logout (or Ctrl-D) or you may find yourself heading all the
way down the Inception levels… 
Run commands inside an instance from outside
$ multipass exec cleansing-guanaco -- lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy
Stop an instance to save resources
$ multipass stop cleansing-guanaco
Delete the instance
$ multipass delete cleansing-guanaco
It will now show up as deleted:
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
cleansing-guanaco Deleted -- Not Available
And when you want to completely get rid of it:
$ multipass purge
Integrate into the rest of your virtualisation
You might have other virtualisation already based on libvirt, either through using the similar older uvtool or through the more common virt-manager.
You might, for example, want those guests to be on the same bridge to communicate to each other or you need access to the graphical output for some reason.
Fortunately it is possible to integrate this by using the libvirt backend of multipass:
$ sudo multipass set local.driver=libvirt
After that when you start a guest you can also access it via tools like virt-manager or virsh:
$ multipass launch ubuntu
Launched: engaged-amberjack
$ virsh list
Id Name State
----------------------------------------------------
15 engaged-amberjack running
Get help
multipass help
multipass help <command>
See the Multipass documentation for more details.