New Machine - Ubuntu in Parallels Apple Silicon

I need to setup new machine from time to time, and I always forget all the things that need to be set up. So, here it goes. I won’t setup any encryption since I expect MacBook disk itself to be already encrypted.

The only way that worked for me is to let Parallels download and install Ubuntu 22.04. Manual installations failed for me:

  • None of the Ubuntu 23.10 ISO arm64 images worked for me - they simply wouldn’t boot.
  • Ubuntu 24.04 ISO arm64 image would install and boot and would work reasonably fast, but not buttery-smooth and parallels guest addons would fail to install (Parallels 19). However, this is the right way to use Ubuntu under UTM with GPU acceleration.
  • Alternatively you can try to install Ubuntu 23.10 server, then install ubuntu-desktop and go through troubleshooting to make desktop work, but I wonder what’s the point since Ubuntu 22.04 works just as good.

OS and Filesystem

When auto-installing, Parallels will create two partitions using the GPT partitioning table: 1GB efi and 64GB ext4. I’d argue ext4 is better for VM disks since btrfs uses COW and would balloon the VM disk size much more than ext4. Therefore, let’s use ext4. It will also create a 2G swapfile, you can resize it later.

Name the machine after its expected usage, e.g. mavi-macbook-vm-experiments.

Post-installation

Enable user-accessible dmesg: edit /etc/sysctl.d/10-kernel-hardening.conf and kernel.dmesg_restrict = 0.

ext4

Enable trim. You need to enable discard for all of your ext4 partitions: simply add the discard option to /etc/fstab. Note that swap on a swap partition will perform discard automatically. Make sure the VM disk supports trim: lsblk --discard should print non-zero value in DISC-GRAN for sda.

Regarding additional fs flags:

  • user_xattr is enabled by default on ext4; check with sudo tune2fs -l /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root and also user_xattr ubuntu forums thread
  • extents - ext4: unknown. There’s no longer a mount option extent or extents, probably they are on by default, but it doesn’t hurt to turn them on via tune2fs -O extents.

Install basic software

sudo apt update
sudo apt -V dist-upgrade
sudo snap refresh
sudo apt install git vim htop fish doublecmd-qt gnome-text-editor libreoffice net-tools curl whois
sudo apt autoremove --purge rhythmbox thunderbird
sudo update-alternatives --config editor     # select vim.basic

Note: install doublecmd-qt rather than doublecmd-gtk since GTK version doesn’t support wayland.

Uninstall gedit:

sudo apt autoremove --purge gedit

gnome keyboard shortcuts

Open “Keyboard Settings” GNOME settings, “View and customize shortcuts”, set:

  • “Launchers” / “Launch Terminal” to ^T
  • Navigation:
    • “Move Window one workspace to the left” set to Shift+Super+Page Up, setting it to the same setting as before. This, for some fucking reason, stops capturing Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Left from Intellij
    • “Move Window one workspace to the right” set to Shift+Super+Page Down, setting it to the same setting as before.
  • “Windows”:
    • “Hide window”: disabled
    • “Move window”: disabled; you can always move window by Win+left-dragging anywhere within the window
    • “Resize window”: disabled; you can always resize window by Win+middleclick-dragging near appropriate border of the window

I tend to configure Gnome to swap Alt, Ctrl and Meta keys, so that ^ works as Meta, ⌥ works as Alt and ⌘ works as Ctrl in guest. To configure this, follow Mac-like cursor control: Win/Alt/Ctrl scenario.

In order to fix mouse scrolling speed, open gnome-tweaks, “Keyboard & Mouse” and set “Acceleration profile” to “Flat”.

gnome text editor

  • Settings Cog wheel > Show Line numbers
  • Settings Cog wheel > Show Right Margin
  • Settings Cog wheel > disable “Text Wrapping”
  • Settings Cog wheel > disable “Check Spelling”
  • Preferences > Appearance: select 2nd row 2nd column.
  • Preferences > Highlight current line
  • Preferences > Display overview map
  • Preferences > Right margin: set to 120
  • Preferences > Restore Session: disable

fish

chsh -s /usr/bin/fish

To add environment variables, add them at the end of the ~/.config/fish/config.fish file:

export M2_HOME="$HOME/local/apache-maven"
export PATH="$PATH:$M2_HOME/bin"

Firefox

Firefox should run in Wayland mode by default; verify in the about:support page: the “Window Protocol” setting should read “wayland” instead of “xwayland”.

Make sure to disable “smooth scrolling” in settings.

gnome system monitor extension

Follow Install System Monitor Extension To Ubuntu Gnome.

git+sshkey

Create the ~/.gitconfig file:

[user]
  name = Martin Vysny
  email = mavi@vaadin.com
[alias]
  ci = commit
  st = status
[color]
  ui = auto
[push]
  default = current
  followTags = true
  autoSetupRemote = true
[core]
  editor = vim
  autocrlf = input
[merge]
  conflictstyle = diff3

Create ssh key & press enter to keep the default settings:

ssh-keygen

Upload the public key to github ssh keys

Double Commander

Go to Configuration:

  • Colors / File Panels / Text Color: black
  • Colors / File types:
    • category name: executable, mask: *, attributes: -*x*, color: Green
    • dir, *, d*, Navy
    • symlink, *, l*, Teal
  • Files views / Files views extra / Show system and hidden files
  • Folder tabs / “Show tab header also when there is only one tab” - uncheck
  • Fonts:
    • Main Font: Ubuntu 11 Regular
    • Viewer font: Ubuntu Mono 13
  • Icons / File panel: 16x16
  • Keys: “Ctrl+Alt+Letters”: None
  • Keys / Hot Keys:
    • cm_RunTerm: F2
    • cm_PackFiles: ⌘P
    • cm_ExtractFiles: ⌘U
    • cm_TargetEqualSource: ⌘=
    • cm_ChangeDirToHome: ` (grave accent)
    • cm_RenameOnly: F9
    • cm_Search: ⇧⌘F
  • Tools / Editor:
    • Use External Program;
    • executable: gnome-text-editor
    • additional parameters: -n

Sort by extension.

MacBook

Follow New MacBook Setup.

Intellij

There’s no IDEA snap for arm64 distro, therefore you have to download & unpack it manually, then run it from the command-line. IDEA will update itself correctly.

Login to my user account. To restore settings, follow Sync settings between IDE instances. Make sure to:

  1. overwrite local settings from jetbrains account
  2. enable “sync plugins silently”

GNOME Settings

Go to Settings. Then:

  • Appearance > Color: select blue
  • Multitasking > Application Switching > Include Apps From Current Workspace only
  • Privacy
    • Location Services > Turn on
    • File History & trash
      • Enable “Automatically Delete Trash Content” and “Automatically Delete Temporary Files”
    • Screen Lock: Blank Screen Display: Never
  • Date & Time: Enable Automatic Time Zone

Software & Updates

Go to the “Updates” tab and set:

  • When there are other updates: Display Immediately
  • Notify me of new Ubuntu version: For LTS only

LTS: the reason is that Parallels only supports Ubuntu 22.04; it shows scary segfaults on Ubuntu 23.10+. Before upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04, I need to test that it’s rock-solid; also this may require Parallels 20+.

Docker

sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose

Add your user to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker parallels

Reboot, and test it out:

docker run --rm -ti ubuntu /bin/bash

Terminal

Set Initial terminal size in the “Profile” setting to 160x50.

netplan/NetworkManager

netplan by default uses systemd.networkd to control network interfaces. Using NetworkManager is much easier though, let’s switch to that (otherwise VPN via NetworkManager will refuse to enable). Edit /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml and add renderer: NetworkManager:

# This is the network config written by 'subiquity'
network:
  ethernets:
    enp0s5:
      dhcp4: true
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager
Written on March 13, 2024