Sure, there's a local provider that uses LXC containers on your local machine (Ubuntu only), and we're working on a way to use LXD (which is a much cleaner local environment).

If you are running OSX, Windows, or a non-Ubuntu linux, you'd need an Ubuntu VM to run the local provider (we support Centos, Windows, and OSX for the juju client in general to control remote providers like Azure, Amazon, etc, just not for running the local provider).

https://jujucharms.com/get-started