Garage

Optional

Sit down. Relax. Break things. Roll back.

Virtual machines from a ready-made Fedora image or any ISO, fast enough to forget they're virtual. Take a snapshot before you try something, and go back if it went wrong.

nightdrive apps install garage

Garage with three virtual machines, one of them open with its settings and a list of snapshots

Ready in a minute

A ready-made Fedora image needs no installer: its first boot makes your user, with sudo and your ssh key.

Snapshots

Take one before you try something, and go back to it if that went wrong. A duplicate takes no space of its own.

Nearly native speed

qemu with KVM: aarch64 VMs on an Apple Silicon Mac, x86_64 on a PC.

ssh my-new-vm

Each running VM has its own port, and Garage keeps your ssh config up to date.

Using it

`HyperG`	Open Garage
`?`	Garage's keys
`⌘N`	New VM
`s`	Start
`d`	Show its display, or bring it to this workspace
`x`	Shut down
`⇧X`	Pull the plug
`t`	Take a snapshot (VM stopped)
`Enter`	Go back to the snapshot
`ec`	Rename or duplicate the snapshot
`Delete` or `⌘⌫`	Delete the snapshot
`⌘,`	Memory, CPUs, disk, ISO and ssh user of a stopped VM
F2	Rename a stopped VM

A ready-made image (Fedora 44 Minimal on a Mac, Cloud Base on a PC) needs no installer: its first boot makes your user, with sudo and your ssh key. Or pick an ISO from Downloads (or ~/vm).
The top bar's garage icon lights up while a VM runs; a click lists your VMs to start or show.
Nightdrive in a VM follows its window's size, as in UTM and Parallels, at scale 2 until you pick another in its Settings › Display.
A snapshot's duplicate shares its space on the disk. Beside each snapshot is the space it alone keeps.
ssh NAME reaches a running VM: each has a port of its own, kept in ~/.ssh/config.d/garage (Garage adds Include config.d/garage to ~/.ssh/config).
Your VMs live in ~/.local/share/nightdrive/garage, and stay there if you remove Garage.
A VM reaches your computer's local services too: 10.0.2.2 in it is the host's 127.0.0.1. Keep that in mind before running something you don't trust in one.

In a terminal

Command	What it does
`garage`	Opens Garage, or brings it forward
`garage list`	The VMs, one line each
`garage start`, `stop`, `kill`, `display`, `hide [NAME]`	A VM by its name, or the only one there is
`garage ssh [NAME]`	`ssh NAME`: a shell in it, or a command after its name
`garage rename-vm NAME NEWNAME`	A new name for a stopped VM, its ssh name too
`garage set NAME user USER`, `port N`	Its ssh user, or another port (if something else has its own)
`garage help`	Everything else: create, snapshot, restore, delete…
`garage install`, `uninstall`	Garage among your apps, or out of them (the VMs and qemu stay)
`garage restart`, `quit`, `log`	After a change to Garage, and its QML errors