Shared disks
Instances of the same distro share one disk — so only one of them can run at a time.
On this page 3 sections
Each distro has one disk image on your Mac, and every instance of that distro uses it. Two Debian instances, one Debian disk.
Why#
Distro disks are big, and a copy per instance would fill your Mac quickly. Sharing means a new instance costs almost nothing.
What it means#
- Only one instance per distro can run at a time. Two running machines writing to one disk would wreck it, so MSL refuses: "'other' is already running and shares distro's disk with 'this' — running both at once would corrupt it; stop 'other' first."
- Files are shared. Anything saved inside Linux on
workis there onscratch, if they're the same distro. So is your Linux user. - Disk size and storage settings are shared — see Disk size and storage.
- Disk maintenance blocks the whole distro while it runs.
What's separate#
Each instance still has its own name, CPUs and memory, sandbox gates, SSH shortcut, hibernated session, snapshots, and Mac apps.