May 2, 2026

Set Up a Guix VM on macOS

This is a quick way to run Guix on Apple Silicon Macs using UTM and the prebuilt aarch64 QEMU image.

1. Download the aarch64 GNU Guix QEMU image from https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/.
2. Install UTM from https://mac.getutm.app/.
3. In UTM, create a new virtual machine.
4. Choose Virtualize, then select Other as the operating system.
5. Set the boot device to None, then enable UEFI Boot.
6. After the VM is created, open its settings and delete the default attached drive.
7. Add a new drive and import the .qcow2 image you downloaded earlier.
8. Start the virtual machine.