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Installing a distro

Download a distro's disk image once, and every instance using it can start.

Chapter 2 of 201 min read
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Before an instance can start, its distro's disk image has to be on your Mac. It's a one-time download of a few hundred megabytes per distro, shared by every instance that uses that distro.

From the app#

  1. Select an instance whose distro isn't downloaded yet. Its header shows **Install Distro** where Start would normally be.
  2. Click **Install Distro. The button changes to Downloading…**, and the Applications tab shows the live progress line from the installer.
  3. When it finishes, a green banner says "Distro installed — Instances using it can start now." The button becomes Start.

The Applications tab offers the same **Install Distro** button while the instance has nothing installed.

From Terminal#

The New Instance sheet mentions this route, and it does exactly the same thing:

shell
msl install debian

The name is one of alpine, debian, ubuntu, kali, arch, fedora, rocky, alma, centos, oracle, opensuse or nix.

Where images live#

In ~/Library/Application Support/MSL, one image file per distro. The Storage card on each instance's Overview tab shows how much space its image really takes on your Mac — often far less than its size, because images only take the space they've actually written. See Disk size and storage.

See also