Getting Started

Select a Linux Distribution

Cubic can create a virtual machine for you from a common Linux distribution. First of all, you need to decide which distribution you want to use. You can list all supported distributions with:

$ cubic images
Name                       Arch         Size   Cached
archlinux:latest           amd64   516.7 MiB       no
debian:{12, bookworm}      amd64   426.0 MiB       no
debian:{11, bullseye}      amd64   343.5 MiB       no
debian:{10, buster}        amd64   301.7 MiB       no
debian:{13, trixie}        amd64   411.2 MiB       no
fedora:41                  amd64   468.9 MiB       no
fedora:41                  amd64   468.9 MiB       no
fedora:42                  amd64   507.6 MiB       no
fedora:43                  amd64   556.3 MiB       no
opensuse:15.2              amd64   544.1 MiB       no
opensuse:15.3              amd64   560.4 MiB       no
opensuse:15.4              amd64   683.7 MiB       no
opensuse:15.5              amd64   643.1 MiB       no
opensuse:15.6              amd64   683.6 MiB       no
rockylinux:10              amd64   548.8 MiB       no
rockylinux:8               amd64     1.9 GiB       no
rockylinux:9               amd64   618.8 MiB       no
ubuntu:{18.04, bionic}     amd64   206.0 MiB       no
ubuntu:{18.10, cosmic}     amd64   289.7 MiB       no
ubuntu:{19.04, disco}      amd64   153.3 MiB       no
ubuntu:{19.10, eoan}       amd64   193.1 MiB       no
ubuntu:{20.04, focal}      amd64   251.9 MiB       no
ubuntu:{20.10, groovy}     amd64   250.6 MiB       no
ubuntu:{21.04, hirsute}    amd64   258.3 MiB       no
ubuntu:{21.10, impish}     amd64   254.4 MiB       no
ubuntu:{22.04, jammy}      amd64   293.9 MiB       no
ubuntu:{22.10, kinetic}    amd64   294.5 MiB       no
ubuntu:{23.04, lunar}      amd64   335.9 MiB       no
ubuntu:{23.10, mantic}     amd64   228.1 MiB       no
ubuntu:{24.04, noble}      amd64   251.5 MiB       no
ubuntu:{24.10, oracular}   amd64   249.6 MiB       no
ubuntu:{25.04, plucky}     amd64   261.1 MiB       no
ubuntu:{25.10, questing}   amd64   394.4 MiB       no

Create the Virtual Machine

In the next step you can create the virtual machine with a single command:

$ cubic create example --image debian:bookworm

List all Virtual Machine

You can list all your virtual machine with the following command:

$ cubic instances
PID    Name         Arch    CPUs     Memory       Disk   Running
       example      amd64      1    1.0 GiB    1.0 GiB       yes

Additional Settings

You can also override the default virtual machine settings and define the number of CPUs, the memory size and disk size. For example to create a virtual machine with 4 CPU cores, 4 GiB of memory and 10 GiB of disk storage use:

$ cubic create example --image debian:bookworm --cpus 4 --mem 4G  --disk 10G

Start the virtual machine

Once the virtual machine was created you can start it with:

$ cubic start example

Connect with SSH

When the virtual machine is running you can simply connect over SSH by:

$ cubic ssh example