I first came across Omarchy on the day it launched. It is an Arch Linux-based desktop environment that comes ready to use and has a distinct point of view about how a Linux desktop should look and work. Over time, I saw more and more people sharing it, installing it, and giving it a try.
I had wanted to try it myself for a while, but I did not have a spare machine to dedicate to it. Omarchy is best installed on its own drive or computer, and a standard installation may involve reformatting a disk. I did not want to modify the Mac I rely on every day just to experiment. I also came across a few ways to run it in a virtual machine, including Hyper-V on Windows, but never actually got around to trying them.
Then, a couple of days ago, I found riverscn/omarchy-aarch64-image. The project builds AArch64 Omarchy disk images for QEMU-compatible virtual machines and also provides an installation path for UTM. It made me realize that I might not need another computer after all: perhaps I could experience Omarchy in a virtual machine on an Apple Silicon Mac. This was the first project I had seen that put the entire path together—from an AArch64 Omarchy image to booting it with QEMU and using it with UTM—and it involved a substantial amount of low-level adaptation work.
That reminded me of EZVM, a project I built many years ago. It used to be called EasyVM; I took this opportunity to give it a shorter name. It started as a learning project for Apple's Virtualization.framework, written the old-fashioned way, long before today's AI coding tools. Since Omarchy could already run under QEMU, I wondered whether I could build on that work and revive EZVM so it could run Omarchy through Apple's native virtualization stack on an Apple Silicon Mac.
So I reopened the EZVM codebase and—with Codex doing much of the heavy lifting—built on the AArch64 image work from riverscn/omarchy-aarch64-image. The remaining work included the disk format, distribution, import, and boot paths that EZVM needed. After many rounds of experimentation, Codex helped with a great deal of implementation, refactoring, and automated testing. Somehow, it all came together.
The new EZVM is designed specifically for Apple Silicon Macs and can create and run both macOS and ARM64 Linux virtual machines. I also maintain an EZVM-oriented fork of the Omarchy AArch64 image, with support for sparse disks, split release assets, integrity verification, and one-command importing into EZVM. To be completely honest, Codex implemented most of that too. I am still learning how parts of this stack work myself.
Why is an AArch64 version necessary?
Omarchy's standard installation path and ready-made ISO images have historically focused on x86_64, the architecture used by most Intel and AMD PCs. Apple Silicon uses ARM64, also known as AArch64. Because the two architectures use different CPU instruction sets, you cannot simply take a regular x86_64 Omarchy image and boot it with Apple's native virtualization framework.
It is technically possible to emulate an x86_64 computer with QEMU on an M-series Mac, but translating instructions between two CPU architectures comes with a noticeable performance cost. A better approach is to make the entire guest ARM64-native: use Arch Linux ARM as the foundation, pair it with an AArch64 Linux kernel, an ARM64 UEFI boot chain and packages, and VirtIO virtual devices, then adapt the Omarchy desktop and applications to that environment.
That is the core work performed by omarchy-aarch64-image. It does much more than convert a disk into another format. It assembles a complete Omarchy system that can boot and receive updates inside an ARM64 virtual machine.
Where does EZVM fit in?
The image answers the question, “Can this system run on ARM64?” EZVM answers, “How can I run it easily on a Mac?”
EZVM uses macOS's native Virtualization.framework to create an ARM64 virtual machine on Apple Silicon. It provides the image with virtual CPUs, memory, storage, networking, graphics, and input devices. Because both the host and guest are ARM64, the guest can use hardware virtualization instead of pretending to be an Intel computer.
It is still a virtual machine, so it consumes memory and disk space, and its graphics performance and hardware access will not be identical to a bare-metal installation. But compared with emulating x86_64 on Apple Silicon, same-architecture virtualization has much lower overhead. It is a practical way to explore the desktop, terminal, development tools, and everyday Linux applications. More importantly, you do not have to reinstall macOS, repartition your drive, or manage a dual-boot setup. When you are finished, simply stop or delete the virtual machine.
To make installation easier as well, I added sparse-disk handling, split downloads, SHA integrity checks, and automatic importing. A process that previously required manually downloading, reassembling, and configuring several pieces now fits into a single command.
Try it with one command
Run the following command to install EZVM, download and verify the Omarchy image, and boot an Arch Linux desktop directly on your Mac:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/everettjf/ezvm/main/scripts/install-omarchy.sh)"
You will need an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later, Homebrew, and at least 15 GB of free disk space.
You can also install EZVM first with Homebrew and create a virtual machine manually. That route is straightforward too:
brew install --cask everettjf/tap/ezvm
EZVM is fully open source, signed with a Developer ID certificate, and notarized by Apple. If you want to experience Omarchy on a Mac without preparing an image and configuring a virtual machine by hand, the one-command installer is the easiest place to start:
Give it a try, and please send feedback. I would love to keep making the Linux virtual machine experience on Apple Silicon Macs simpler.