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macOS Container Machines

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Re: macOS Container Machines

#73
post #26

OrbStack 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…

just dropping in to say orbstack super owns and i use it every day. huge respect to rethinking this experience, for a minute there i thought docker was just going to be the only path. i dont think ive looked back for docker since. orbstack just feels right, and damn its so fast and good with resources, and the UI is just insanely straight forward. props!

Re: macOS Container Machines

#74
Anyone know why you would use this instead of QEMU+Lima+Colima+Docker/containerd? The latter works on multiple OSes, has a very large ecosystem of tools, images, documentation, and lets you replace pieces as needed

Re: macOS Container Machines

#75
post #37

Would be cool if you can redirect USB devices to the VM.

We just released this in OrbStack :) https://docs.orbstack.dev/features/usb Blog post soon

Yeah I find this useful for redirecting storage/sdcard*, so you can format linux filesystems or use other tools.

* need a usb sdcard reader for macbook pro cause the builtin is not usb)

Re: macOS Container Machines

#76
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allocation of a finite amount of engineering resources.

And a legitimate business interest to further incentivize the adoption of Apple Silicon devices. Same with Rosetta deprecation after macOS 27.

Rosetta 2. Rosetta was for Intel to emulate 68k, now if you could get Rosetta 2 to run under Rosetta, then you could run 68k, on an ARM, and if you could get the apple ][ emulator...

Re: macOS Container Machines

#77

[flagged]

macOS only needs to support the hardware it ships on, so of course Linux would have wider hardware support, but that doesn’t really matter in context. The bigger question is what hardware to people actually want? I see most people drool over Apple hardware while not finding any suitable equivalent for the PC that they can install Linux on.

Framework is trying to close that gap with their new release, but we’ll have to see how it is once people get their hands on it. I think it also comes at a price premium. There is always the Thinkpad route, but Lenovo burned just about every bridge with me a decade ago with things like Superfish. Where is the premium Linux laptop OEM that people can trust? Last I heard System76 was just rebranding Clevo hardware. What are people using? Dell? HP?

Re: macOS Container Machines

#78
post #26

OrbStack 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…

We love OrbStack too! Thank you for it,

I wanted to make its VM/machine our default secure agent sandbox, but I couldn’t figure out how to isolate this VM from the host properly. This thread prompted me to find the issue though, and I saw this was recently implemented! https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/169

Re: macOS Container Machines

#79
post #26

Earlier 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…

We love OrbStack too! Thank you for it, I wanted to make its VM/machine our default secure agent sandbox, but I couldn’t figure out how to isolate this VM from the host properly. This thread prompted me to find the issue though, and I saw this was recently implemented! https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/169

Yep! Still refining it but isolated machines now have fine-grained settings for filesystem mounts, network isolation, SSH agent forwarding, and CPU/memory/disk limits

Re: macOS Container Machines

#80
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, lack of security becomes a feature. A fully secure, locked-down, T2 attested macOS is able to be controlled not just by Apple, but by increasingly evil governments, with no recourse available to users.

Conversely, a Linux system with no verified boot can be easily tampered with without the user detecting it by people lower than the government such as casual hackers. So in a world where your government is going crazy, you're opting for an operating system that can be penetrated with relative ease (e.g. with persistent root malware) both by a non-government hacker on top of a state backed one.

I'd also guess it's much harder to securely source components for a Linux build in the way Apple is able to.
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