Wouldn’t it be nice if services like Codespaces or Coder or Gitlab would allow you to target running on their hosted/integrated platform, or let you launch that same container completely locally? Sometimes I wanna take my “remote” dev environment off-line but still benefit from the integrated UX.
macOS Container Machines
41–50 of 457 posts
Re: macOS Container Machines
#42Would be cool if you can redirect USB devices to the VM.
Agreed! There's some good improvements around Accessory Access in virtualization framework this year also - checkout: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/224/?time=2...
Re: macOS Container Machines
#43Will this be able to replace docker desktop an equivalents, removing the expensive Linux VM that runs alongside them?
It mostly removes the big shared background VM and replaces it with smaller, more isolated Apple-native VMs. I did an experiment migrating my Podman workload to Apple's container @ https://gist.github.com/jmonster/39e14585e107dbf990a90966c0f... TL;DR reduces ram/storage usage; minimizes it's existence
How does that work, realistically?
> Memory defaults to half of host memory
That's the most expensive part of the whole transaction, b/c AFAIK, RAM is then dedicated to the VM. It can be swapped out, I suppose, but that's not great.
Re: macOS Container Machines
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
(OrbStack dev here.) Instead of Virtualization.framework, we have a custom Rust virtualization stack with custom devices and protocols for things like filesystem sharing. It's a highly optimized vertically integrated stack specifically for running our Linux machines and containers. Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else…
Apple says that `systemctl` is supported... hmm am I missing something? "Real Linux services for testing. Run a database or whatever your stack needs as a system service — systemctl start postgresql works on images with systemd installed."
Good catch, I tried the example alpine commands and there was no init system. Makes sense if it's based on OCI images
Re: macOS Container Machines
#45OrbStack works really well for me. I wonder how it’s compared to this performance wise
(OrbStack dev here.) Instead of Virtualization.framework, we have a custom Rust virtualization stack with custom devices and protocols for things like filesystem sharing. It's a highly optimized vertically integrated stack specifically for running our Linux machines and containers. Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else…
I’ve been using podman on Mac. It’s been a nice fit as the container build files are identical to what I use on my fedora server. I have noticed my 2 virtual core 4 gb Linode vps runs apps faster in the same container as when run on my MacBook Air M2 16 gb. I expected some performance overhead but didn’t think it would be noticeable as it is. Overall happy with podman. How might OrbStack differ?
Re: macOS Container Machines
#46OrbStack works really well for me. I wonder how it’s compared to this performance wise
(OrbStack dev here.) Instead of Virtualization.framework, we have a custom Rust virtualization stack with custom devices and protocols for things like filesystem sharing. It's a highly optimized vertically integrated stack specifically for running our Linux machines and containers. Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else…
I know this is off topic, but I do thank you for your Android work, the idea and elegance of fastboot.js and that SafetyNet workaround trick was truly really cool.
Re: macOS Container Machines
#47To clarify a few comments here: this is not only OCI containers: container machines add support for persistence and filesystem mounting, making container machines a great lightweight Linux environment for developers using macOS. More details here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/389
Ah, the Darwin/BSD Subsystem for Linux.
Not quite, it’s still a VM. And while it supports virtio balloon for growing RAM, it doesn’t yet support releasing that RAM back to the host. And there isn’t a convenient way to shrink the sparse disk images as they grow yet, either.
Re: macOS Container Machines
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, Linux is much much less secure.
This claim is so absurd that I need some sources.
The person you replied to is right, the "security" of Linux might as well be nonexistent compared to macOS and especially iOS/Android. Even the developers of Secureblue (https://secureblue.dev/) state that despite their hardening and mitigations Linux still lags far behind macOS (and possibly Windows) security-wise. The only Linux derivative that has proper security is Android, and even better GrapheneOS.
https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/linux-insecurities/
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
I also commented here on Linux phones, the same can apply to Linux as a desktop OS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46997397
Also on top of that Linux/Windows laptops also lack the hardware-backed security that Macs and to an extent some Chromebooks have.
Re: macOS Container Machines
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This claim is so absurd that I need some sources.
Linux is easier to misconfigure. Macs resists being misconfigured insecurely. At their tightest, I'd say neither is fundamentally more insecure than the other. (The exception would be M5-based Macs, which come with MIE. Though that isn't a macOS vs Linux thing per se .)
This is incorrect macOS is fundamentally more secure than desktop Linux operating systems and it isn't particularly close.
No amount of Linux hardening will get a system even close to an M-chip Mac. Software insecurities aside, desktop Linux OS systems have almost none of the hardware-backed security benefits that Macs do.
Re: macOS Container Machines
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
(OrbStack dev here.) Instead of Virtualization.framework, we have a custom Rust virtualization stack with custom devices and protocols for things like filesystem sharing. It's a highly optimized vertically integrated stack specifically for running our Linux machines and containers. Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else…
I know this is off topic, but I do thank you for your Android work, the idea and elegance of fastboot.js and that SafetyNet workaround trick was truly really cool.
Ahh those were good times, glad you came across it :)