Canonical's Multipass software is used for orchestrating Ubuntu virtual instances with a single command to launch Ubuntu VMs across Windows, macOS, and Linux. Multipass 1.17 was released today and they are now offering direct support for enabling non-Ubuntu Linux distributions as well.
New to Multipass 1.17 is "direct support for Linux distributions other than Ubuntu." Initially focused on for Multipass 1.17 is built-in support for both Debian and Ubuntu Linux. They are opening up other Linux distributions for easier deployment with Multipass and are welcoming user feedback about other Linux distributions worth adding.
Multipass 1.17 also allows better simulating cloud environments locally via a new availability zones feature. The availability zones for Multipass allow for organizing VMs into pre-defined zones with isolated subnets and other cloud-like environment features.
Multipass 1.17 also brings a redesigned image catalog in the Multipass GUI, a new Host Compute System (HCS) driver on Microsoft Windows as more robust than their prior Hyper-V integration path, and a new Apple virtualization framework back-end for macOS. The Apple Virtualization Framework provides faster startup and native ASIF disk image support on macOS 26.
Also new to Multipass 1.17 is POWER PPC64EL and IBM s390x / IBM Z architecture support. The Multipass GUI is also now defaulting to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS along with bringing various bug fixes and other enhancements.
Downloads and more details on Multipass 1.17 via GitHub and Ubuntu Discourse.