Cubic

Cubic is a cross-platform tool that spins up Linux virtual machines with a single command. It is made for developers who need a clean Linux system fast.

Linux distributions come as official images and are ready to use within seconds. Cubic keeps things simple and secure by acting as lightweight glue over proven tools such as QEMU. No privileged system service is required and every VM instance runs as your normal user.

The Tutorial builds your first virtual machine step by step. The How-to Guides each solve one task. The Reference lists the settings. The Explanation covers how Cubic works and why. The Commands pages list every command and its options.

Features

Fast and simple

• Creates a VM and opens a shell in one command

• Boots official Linux distribution images in seconds

• Written in Rust

Runs anywhere

• Runs on Linux, macOS and Windows hosts

• Ships Alma Linux, Alpine Linux, Arch Linux, CentOS Stream, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Rocky Linux and Ubuntu

• Runs amd64 and arm64 guests

• Uses the hardware accelerator of the host, KVM on Linux, Hypervisor on macOS, WHPX on Windows and NVMM on BSD

Everyday work

• Forwards ports from a VM to the host

• Copies files between host and VM and between two VMs

• Executes single commands in a VM

• Creates VM instances from reusable templates

• Snapshots a VM disk and restores it later

• Clones and renames VM instances

• Runs temporary VM instances that are deleted after use

• Isolates a VM from the network with one flag

Safe by default

• Runs every VM as a normal user process without a privileged system service

• Verifies every image against the checksum of the distribution

• Protects every VM with its own SSH key and a locked password

• Keeps the QEMU control channels on private Unix sockets

Source Code

The source code of Cubic is on Github.