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Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

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Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#12
post #3

Linking to the homebrew installer for this is an...odd... Choice. Never the less, congrats podman devs!

Mostly because the dev linked to the Homebrew installer when announcing(?) it on her Twitter account[0], but also because the forked repo[1] that contains the patches just shows the original README.

This isn’t an official port to the M1 — it’s a custom version patched by a different dev.

[0]: https://twitter.com/simnalamburt/status/1434244533001224192

[1]: https://github.com/simnalamburt/podman

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#13

Is there anyway to make docker-style Darwin containers?

I don't see reason why it wouldn't be possible. Windows did just that.

Although at that point having x86_64-linux, x86_64-windows and armv8-darwin would further remove benefits of docker reducing it to a fancy tarball.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#15
post #14

Demn after Docker Desktop announcment this podman gets posted almost daily on HackerNews. I understand its a good moment do advertise, but good tools happen to advertise themselves.

> good tools happen to advertise themselves.

Nothing advertises itself. People advertise things, by posting about them.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#16

Anyone tried this? How's the performance compared to Docker Machine in Mac (notoriously slow on storage).

I assume it's pretty slow, not on storage but on compute. x86 docker/podman on M1 must use QEMU software emulation, rosetta doesn't support x86 virtualization.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#18

Anyone tried this? How's the performance compared to Docker Machine in Mac (notoriously slow on storage).

I assume it's pretty slow, not on storage but on compute. x86 docker/podman on M1 must use QEMU software emulation, rosetta doesn't support x86 virtualization.

Why do you think that it uses x86? I assume that it just runs ordinary ARM linux in VM which just works (I also don't really understand this title post, surely podman worked on ARM linux since the beginning).

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#19

Anyone tried this? How's the performance compared to Docker Machine in Mac (notoriously slow on storage).

I assume it's pretty slow, not on storage but on compute. x86 docker/podman on M1 must use QEMU software emulation, rosetta doesn't support x86 virtualization.

Behind the scenes, it's using QEMU with Alex Graf's patches for hvf (Hypervisor.framework) support, so it's Virtualization, not emulation. In other words, the performance is really good ;-)

BTW, in case you don't want to depend on a fork, upstream podman is going to gain M1 support (in the sense of 'podman-machine' knowing how to start aarch64 VMs with hvf) very soon.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#20

Is there anyway to make docker-style Darwin containers?

I don't think Mac/Darwin has cgroups but it's based on BSD to it might have jails?

So my somewhat shaky understanding is that Apple does have some form of jails in Darwin, because they use it on iOS (hence, "jailbreaking"), but for some reason doesn't ship it in desktop Darwin (aka macOS).
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