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Will this be able to replace docker desktop an equivalents, removing the expensive Linux VM that runs alongside them?
The use case is actually the opposite of what you seem to want (i.e. running Linux containers on macOS without a Linux VM); this uses a Linux-based container implementation of macOS to provide a long-lived Linux VM that looks more like a VM itself than a container.
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Potentially faster application execution along much lower memory requirements. In the case of docker, even a possibility of shared library loading further reducing runtime costs (For example, containers based on the same base image could load glibc into memory only once). There's also simply the possibility of using linux software directly in macos without doing OS dependent changes to the software.
Yeah. But in exchange it’s a lot of work to keep up with. For GUI stuff you’re now having to have some sort of Wayland layer/driver. Running VMs is really really easy and low maintenance demand on Apple. And it’s guaranteed compatibility. Wasn’t compatibility what really sunk WSL1?
The target for this isn't GUI stuff.
How is this different from Virtualbox or similar products with a shared folder with the host machine? I expected that existing virtualization tech for Macs already did that. Maybe the improvement is having nothing to configure. By the way, is it headless or can it run a full Linux desktop? Use case: buy a Mac, uninistall whatever can be uninstalled, run the Linux VM as primary desktop forgetting MacOS and without goi…
it differs by lacking all the cool options that makes vmware and virtualbox good products, but apple users will praise it as a benefit "bind mounts? I'm better without it"
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OpenDarwin was a thing at one point, with mailing lists and other infrastructure hosted by Apple. That being said, my point isn't that Apple should absolutely focus on making a server OS again. It just saddens me how far behind macOS has fallen as they stopped caring about the fundamentals; back in the day, it would be Linux trailing behind macOS. Nowadays, you can't even have multiple routing tables on the latter, t…
> Nowadays, you can't even have multiple routing tables on the latter, the firewall code was probably last updated in Snow Leopard Apple uses OpenBSD's Packet Filter [1]; I doubt multiple routing tables are a problem. Back in the Snow Leopard days, it was FreeBSD's IPFW, which is also no slouch. Whatever a firewall can do, PF can do it. You can also get a nice GUI for PF [2]. [1]: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/index…
> I doubt multiple routing tables are a problem.
The lack of them is a limitation for me (complex VM + VPN setup), which requires me to do pretty unholy static routing and address rewriting with pf.
I think even Apple has come across this; they added "scoped routing" (which IMO is a hacky workaround providing some of the functionality you'd get with multiple routing tables) just before iOS shipped with MMS support. Android, for comparison, uses Linux's routing policies and tables to send and receive MMS.
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Understand. And yeah that‘s annoying. I use containers only for development and to keep my main system secure from supply chain attacks. I have almost no build tooling in my Mac anymore. No npm, no cargo, no uv. Nothing. They all live inside the container which is completely isolated. I guess my use case is not that important for the main user of these tools.
I wouldn't say your use case is not important. That is a completely reasonable way to work. I just wouldn't say mounting home directories is an anti-feature. There just should be a way to turn it off.
I wrote about that angle here: https://igorstechnoclub.com/sandbox-exec/
Feels like the spiritual successor to sandbox-exec, but with VM-level isolation.
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Well, you can avoid the Docker Desktop tax by not running Docker Desktop. colima is a perfectly usable implementation of Docker for macOS, without the bloat of Docker Desktop. That said, colima still has the expensive VM that upthread is mentioning.
OrbStack is great also
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macOS sandboxing is deliberately limited just enough to prevent anyone from truly implement Darwin-on-Darwin containers. People have been discussing about this for a while, see https://github.com/apple/container/discussions/611 In general I understand the rationale behind Apple's decision. They sell hardware, and there's real demand for macOS on servers to run build jobs and other Mac-only tools. Giving you the abili…
I doubt this insignificant statistically speaking market (compared to the overall units they move) is what prevents them.
Just to clarify, this requires Mac OS 26 Tahoe for "container" doesn't it? So those of us holding out on Sequoia who can't stand the broken glass UI or what's called and the other undesired features need to stick to Docker desktop.
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…