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How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

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Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#41

Post by p_ing »

jdiff wrote: post #39
p_ing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing particularly interesting about that. Linux distro-of-your-choice can run the equivalents fine, as can Windows. Browse /r/macos if you dare to wade into the uninformed cesspool; it's full of OOTB apps causing OOMs (among 3rd party apps) with the past at least two major versions of macOS.

I think there is something interesting there. I was running lighter workloads on similar RAM when I daily drove Debian and was frequently brought to my knees by swapping to death. I had to make conscious choices and manage my RAM usage to avoid it, and still occasionally got T-boned by something I overlooked. I have never had to worry about that with macOS. I admit I don't have much experience with how Windows handle…

Even NT4 handles memory pressure than modern day Linux. It's just not a fair comparison; Linux has never dealt with userspace OOM well.

As for macOS...

https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1njf1aj/bravo_apple_...

https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1nxh08n/impressive_m...

https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1jo5pnq/passwords_ap...

https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1gkwxe4/how_is_memor...

https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1seq0ij/freeform_has...

There are _plenty_ more. There is some fundamental library leaking given the range of impacted apps.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#42

Post by stingraycharles »

sgt wrote: post #8
stingraycharles wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t assume that macOS virtualization is advanced enough to support memory ballooning, or is that not what you’re referring to? Edit: I stand corrected!

macOS is generally pretty amazing at efficient memory usage and VM (virtual memory subsystem) handling. So even a 8GB machine can run pretty impressive workloads without having the user think the machine is underpowered.

Important caveat: that’s mostly the case for desktop workloads when you’re multitasking a lot, and not as much for server workloads where you actually need all memory.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#44

Post by colechristensen »

doubled112 wrote: post #38
colechristensen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu Apple stopped updating this 5 years ago. I remember getting it to boot once long ago but I didn't have anything to actually do with it.

Looks like it is still getting updates and has moved here: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu

I now think of things in terms of token budget. I put my MacOS VM aspirations on the back burner because the effort was taking up 100 GB of space and I made poor choices when it came to laptop specs. Now I'm thinking why not rebuild XNU but I have other things I'd rather spend the tokens on. I don't want to delay other projects so I'm giving up something stupid and fun.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

p_ing wrote: post #41
jdiff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is something interesting there. I was running lighter workloads on similar RAM when I daily drove Debian and was frequently brought to my knees by swapping to death. I had to make conscious choices and manage my RAM usage to avoid it, and still occasionally got T-boned by something I overlooked. I have never had to worry about that with macOS. I admit I don't have much experience with how Windows handle…

Even NT4 handles memory pressure than modern day Linux. It's just not a fair comparison; Linux has never dealt with userspace OOM well. As for macOS... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1njf1aj/bravo_apple_... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1nxh08n/impressive_m... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1jo5pnq/passwords_ap... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1gkwxe4/how_is_memor... https://old.…

[deleted]

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#47

Post by llm_nerd »

"We might hope that macOS would process AI tasks using the CPU and GPU rather than the neural engine, when running in a VM."

That specific Geekbench test is to measure the ANE performance, which they did by setting the CoreML run to cpuAndNeuralEngine. They could have set it to all and it would use any hardware available, but that would be counterproductive to a test that hopes to measure the ANE, no?

And note that there is no "just ANE" option. In this case it is probably the virtualized CPU side of the equation that's yielding the massive slowdowns for int8 and quantized runs.

The ANE isn't the problem here.

https://dennisforbes.ca/blog/microblog/2026/02/apple-neural-...

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#48

Post by sgt »

p_ing wrote: post #17
sgt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS is generally pretty amazing at efficient memory usage and VM (virtual memory subsystem) handling. So even a 8GB machine can run pretty impressive workloads without having the user think the machine is underpowered.

Not really. Larger page sizes mean more potential for wasted memory and it has had a long standing memory leak in some core component to where even Calculator can cause an OOM event.

I mean if there are faulty apps, but where do you get this idea from? The amount of IDE's, docker containers, all kinds of stuff you can run on macOS in just 16GB is astounding. And I've used this OS on the desktop for 23 years.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#49

Post by sgt »

p_ing wrote: post #41
jdiff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is something interesting there. I was running lighter workloads on similar RAM when I daily drove Debian and was frequently brought to my knees by swapping to death. I had to make conscious choices and manage my RAM usage to avoid it, and still occasionally got T-boned by something I overlooked. I have never had to worry about that with macOS. I admit I don't have much experience with how Windows handle…

Even NT4 handles memory pressure than modern day Linux. It's just not a fair comparison; Linux has never dealt with userspace OOM well. As for macOS... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1njf1aj/bravo_apple_... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1nxh08n/impressive_m... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1jo5pnq/passwords_ap... https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1gkwxe4/how_is_memor... https://old.…

Seeing there are thousands running those apps (incl. Freeform) without memory leaks, it could be something else at play here.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#50

Post by hamandcheese »

embedding-shape wrote: post #37
latexr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the signing/notarization just ~200 lines of Bash 200 lines?! That’s two orders of magnitude too many. What exactly are you doing that you need so such code for signing and notarisation?

From the top of my head, unlocking the keychain, finding the right identity, notarizing two parts, the binary itself and the .dmg that the .app ships in and some other stuff I'm sure. Can do a deeper look in a bit when I can. Most of the hassle is because it's 100% unattended and I had to do stuff to avoid GUI-prompts for passwords/unlocks, and that the Forgejo Runner has a different security context.

This matches my experience. Keychain + fully unattended increases the complexity and adds a bunch of landmines that need to be dodged (e.g. GUI prompts like you mentioned).
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