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Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

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Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#111

Post by stephenr »

haswell wrote: post #88
stephenr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because CorporationX says “don’t worry about it we got you bruh” doesn’t mean technologists - people who actively work with technology and write software - should be excused for just throwing up their hands and saying “it’s just ducking magic I don’t know how it works”. I’m not talking about understanding it to the level of being able to contribute a patch to the project. I’m talking about understanding that con…

> Just because CorporationX says “don’t worry about it we got you bruh” doesn’t mean technologists - people who actively work with technology and write software - should be excused for just throwing up their hands and saying “it’s just ducking magic I don’t know how it works”. Entire industries are built on the premise that "don't worry about it, we got you". I'm not saying that it's appropriate to be completely blin…

> This is what you said:

The “one sentence” I was referring to is right above the bit you quoted:

> I’m talking about understanding that containers are inherently tied to the kernel, and thus are limited to running software written for the same kernel as the host running the container.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#112

Post by cogman10 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #102
cogman10 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if the apple approach really works well then I could see AMD or even Intel following suit in the future. If the industry starts to shift and push towards ARM due to cost, AMD and Intel would be fools to just leave that on the table.

Intel's fat margins are largely based on their duopoly on x86. With ARM, it's far more competitive and margins are far lower. With Nvidia owning ARM, it seems likely we'll see more ARM CPUs from them. Samsung, Qualcomm, and Mediatech also have ARM CPUs all the way down to a few dollars per CPU. Intel isn't going to be able to come in and charge $50-500+ unit the way they do with their x86 chips. Unless Intel can rebo…

I don't disagree. In fact, I'm assuming that's a major reason they've not done this sooner.

Intel tried to setup a different more efficient architecture with IA64, but they failed there.

That being said, with major players like Amazon and Google tinkering with ARM in the cloud and Apple getting ARM into the hands of a lot of developers, we could be on the eve of seeing ARM make a big entrance into the server realm.

IMO, a big reason ARM hasn't taken off there in the first place is because most devs aren't using ARM machines for development.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#113

Post by erulabs »

mulcahey wrote: post #55

Perhaps a dumb question but I'm curious why people don't use a VPS or a cloud linux machine more for Docker/K8s development instead of running Docker locally on a Mac. In my experience Docker Desktop has been such a resource hog, and Apple's hypervisor implementation pretty poor. I much prefer to have all that heavy lifting isolated away from my development machine to keep it responsive and cool.

I’m building a startup that aims to help with this - but as others have mentioned - who wants to pay for two computers?

One solution is re-purposing an old PC into a home-server - once that’s setup, tools like Skaffold start to shine - local network speed, a cool laptop, containerized development, and a platform for home-hosting!

Anyways I’m very excited about this future - much more than paying AWS for another machine!

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#114

Post by luhn »

ogre_codes wrote: post #78
luhn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main resource issue is because Docker runs in a VM, it can't share memory with the OS. So it's using the configured amount of memory (2GB by default) whether you're running busybox or an entire Kubernetes cluster.

I think the Virtualization Framework mitigates that to some extent. The way Docker was required to run on x86 it needed a Linux VM which I believe the Docker images ran atop. Under the new model, I think they run on bare metal and share memory. Regardless, for me the cost of adding enough RAM to support Docker is less than the headache and expense of spinning up Docker images in the cloud.

M1 Docker still needs a Linux VM, Virtualization Framework is just a different way of doing that. I'm not aware of any VM that can share memory with the host, but maybe Apple has some black magic up their sleeve.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#115

Post by ogre_codes »

ducktective wrote: post #101
ogre_codes wrote: post #49

This bit about Multi-platform development is most interesting to me. > Many developers are going to experience multi-platform development for the first time with the M1 Macs. This is one of the key areas where Docker shines. Docker has had support for multi-platform images for a long time, meaning that you can build and run both x86 and ARM images on Desktop today. If multi platform images work, a lot of the concerns…

Yeah, until the developers decide to release only for Arm targets and when you search issues for x86 build, the maintainer says "just compile it yourself"... And you look into the dockerfile manifest and see that it wants to pull the whole stack of history of computing...Then you figure maybe you don't need that shiny utility in the first place and move on... It's "64 vs 32-bit" or "Ubuntu vs Arch vs Fedora binary" a…

> Yeah, until the developers decide to release only for Arm targets and when you search issues for x86 build, the maintainer says "just compile it yourself"...

Until we start seeing reasonably priced, performant ARM desktops and laptops, there is little worry of that. Right now outside Apple, performance on ARM isn't good enough for any kind of great developer experience (or any kind of pro experience). Unless that changes significantly, x86 is going to be dominant on non-Macs for some time.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#116

Post by ogre_codes »

cogman10 wrote: post #112
ogre_codes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's fat margins are largely based on their duopoly on x86. With ARM, it's far more competitive and margins are far lower. With Nvidia owning ARM, it seems likely we'll see more ARM CPUs from them. Samsung, Qualcomm, and Mediatech also have ARM CPUs all the way down to a few dollars per CPU. Intel isn't going to be able to come in and charge $50-500+ unit the way they do with their x86 chips. Unless Intel can rebo…

I don't disagree. In fact, I'm assuming that's a major reason they've not done this sooner. Intel tried to setup a different more efficient architecture with IA64, but they failed there. That being said, with major players like Amazon and Google tinkering with ARM in the cloud and Apple getting ARM into the hands of a lot of developers, we could be on the eve of seeing ARM make a big entrance into the server realm. I…

I agree.

> IMO, a big reason ARM hasn't taken off there in the first place is because most devs aren't using ARM machines for development.

Also suspect this is largely true. Most developers have local environments and until Apple, having a local environment with ARM has been awkward. Docker multi-platform images is supposed to mitigate this, but they are still fairly new and I suspect many developers don't trust them yet.

It would be interesting to see Apple launch am M series server. After looking at the M1 Mac mini logic board, it seems like a blade server with stacks of Mac mini boards would be fairly easy to engineer. Apple would just need to build the chassis.

(Not holding my breath waiting for this)

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#117

Post by deergomoo »

jbirer wrote: post #44

Absolute disaster, this platform. The opacity and lack of early availability for development made for a really ugly adoption experience. I feel that people should not encourage this and vote with their money in the DevOps / Dev sector to discourage other companies from pulling the same stunt.

They’re still selling Intel versions of every single Mac except the MacBook Air...

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#118

Post by ogre_codes »

luhn wrote: post #114
ogre_codes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Virtualization Framework mitigates that to some extent. The way Docker was required to run on x86 it needed a Linux VM which I believe the Docker images ran atop. Under the new model, I think they run on bare metal and share memory. Regardless, for me the cost of adding enough RAM to support Docker is less than the headache and expense of spinning up Docker images in the cloud.

M1 Docker still needs a Linux VM, Virtualization Framework is just a different way of doing that. I'm not aware of any VM that can share memory with the host, but maybe Apple has some black magic up their sleeve.

Yeah, fundamentally Docker is Linux on Linux. If you are running Linux on MacOS, it's not Docker, it's a VM. So Docker installs are Linux Docker Image -> Linux VM -> MacOS Virtualization Framework.

For that reason alone, I suspect Linux will always be the best host system for Docker images.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#119

Post by ogre_codes »

jeppesen-io wrote: post #27

Wow, that was fast. I was expecting to wait unil January. Key takeaway for me is the ability to run/build both x86 and Arm images on a M1. Can't see any reason M1s can't be used for everyone at my work now. Very nice.

It won't be more than a tech preview until after Go is stable on the M1 which is likely to be January/ February. Once that happens, it should be pretty quick.

Re: Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for M1

#120

Post by astrange »

my123 wrote: post #46
outworlder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Docker on Mac has never felt as snappy as on Linux It's extremely slow compared to Linux and I'm pointing my fingers at the virtualization layer without any hard evidence because it's the most likely suspect. With all this focus on sandboxing apps of late, I'm wondering how far the OSX kernel is from having a feature set that resembles cgroups and network namespaces.

They have containers already in a sense, whatever the iOS Simulator.app uses is not VMs, and it's a container in more ways than just one.

It's a launchd namespace. It's not meant to be secure in the same way a container would be, but it could be used for something.
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