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OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

orbstack.dev

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Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#91

Post by password4321 »

weikju wrote: post #29
kdrag0n wrote: post #4

Nice to see this here :) I work on OrbStack. Happy to answer questions!

Please keep in mind I’m asking with genuine interest as I am a happy OrbStack user otherwise, (for private use). What is the reason Orbstack needs a connection to your license server for continued operation? I was moving and during nearly a month there was no home internet. My server was happily chugging along on wifi though, but one day I connected to it and saw a message that OrbStack couldn’t contact the license s…

As you appear to be aware per the prefix to your question, this is the nature of all subscription software... what alternative would you choose if you were the author? Requiring the personal use edition to phone home once a month probably increases the potential sale price of the business by at least one order of magnitude.

It would be more interesting to know the plans for tracking down commercial users abusing the personal license, maybe Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack reverse IP address lookup style. The ins and outs of software license enforcement doesn't play well on HN, though I'm guessing there are few complaints about OrbStack requiring a subscription because they offer a free personal use license and the entry level commercial use license is so cheap vs. the value provided.

It's actually exciting to see a dev tool where the developers have a sustainable business model, but this usually means there will be plenty of offers to cash out.

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#92

Post by ignoramous »

KingMob wrote: post #57

OrbStack is great in a lot of ways, and I universally prefer it over Docker for Mac. That being said, it wasn't always been smooth sailing. Under the hood, OrbStack uses an 8TB sparse disk image, which doesn't play nice with most backup software. https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/29 It caused me problems with Backblaze, but the Github issues for this show that it also breaks all sorts of backup software, in…

> I like Orbstack, but I wish the devs...

devs? afaik, it is just one teenager, Danny Lin (he might be 20 by now, though).

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#93

Post by marvin-hansen »

oarmstrong wrote: post #40
marvin-hansen wrote: post #30

I switched to Orbstack about 2 weeks ago after having read about it here on HN. I develop a cloud native system entirely writen in Rust. All my own containers are build without Docker thanks to rules oci in Bazel. However, for integration testing, I'm using internal tools that fire up, say a database container and run the tests all from within Bazel to leverage test caching and parallelization. For a while, i was str…

> My CI server uses Firecracker VM's to isolate OCI containers Is this something you built yourself? I've been looking for a CI tool that uses Firecracker but never found anything, I started building something myself but it never really got finished. Would love to drop that project and use something off the shelf.

BuildBuddy. Google it.

It's totally next level. My build is 70 crates, hundreds of unit tests, integration tests, multi platform docker images for two platforms, and everything is done in under 2 minutes, if it's slow(!). If I hit only an incremental change, build is completed within 30 seconds.

The future is now!

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#94

Post by mrbluecoat »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #88
Animats wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'd like to have something that runs Docker images on desktop but doesn't require a privileged daemon, users, groups, etc.

Probably not what you're looking for but I just wanted to mention Apptainer (previously Singularity). I find that it is usually easier to integrate and doesn't rely on a daemon. You can still use docker images as base.

Agreed. Apptainer is great for this use case.

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#95

Post by eropple »

vultour wrote: post #46
saagarjha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Windows users are unlikely to care about Docker and Linux people don’t pay for stuff

This is hilarious and perfectly sums up my experience with Mac developers. Half of them have no idea Docker Desktop actually installs a Linux VM. They think how amazing their incredibly expensive system is, yet it's mostly a glorified text editor. The WSL experience on Windows convinced me buying a MacOS machine makes no sense.

So I use WSL2 regularly on Windows, but I don't agree at all that buying a Mac doesn't make sense. WSL2 is great, and Windows 10/11 are fine after doing some cleanup...on a desktop. My experience with Windows on even modern laptops is pretty bad.

It's very hard to find something with the build quality and affordances of a Mac. Razer makes a good machine but tbh I'd be embarrassed to bring one to a meeting, and I don't like how newer Thinkpads feel and I don't trust Framework to exist in a few years. It's then complicated while seeking reasonably comparable specs--and I'm not a "oh Apple Silicon sounds warmer" sort of person, amd64 is just fine with me, but AMD's high-end IGPs generally keep pace with base-model Macbooks, and start to fall behind pretty significantly when you move up to a Pro or a Max. You can add a discrete GPU, but, me, I like battery life, and mobile dGPUs are a mess of compromises anyway.

Even if you get over that hurdle, I think Windows feels bad when you're using a touchpad. They haven't cracked that one despite how long they've had to work on it. I wouldn't want to work on a Windows laptop without an external trackball; I carry one with my Mac but rarely use it unless I'm going to be working for a pretty long stretch and I want to save my hands.

Windows is still generally my pick for desktops for a lot of reasons (I don't even dual-boot Linux right now!) but this kind of sneering is weird and uncalled-for.

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#96

Post by unilynx »

pjmlp wrote: post #28
magnio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how WSL2 makes Windows much more usable than macOS for development. None of the free options (colima, multipass, etc) I've tried on macOS are as smooth, though OrbStack might be it. I have also moved towards using devcontainers for my projects whenever I can, so that I can spin up my environment on whatever machine I have, or connect to a remote one if the machine doesn't allow it.

Only because it is a Linux VM, and people insist on using Linux specific stuff instead of UNIX, to the point younger generations have no clue about the difference. Even the BSDs and Solaris/Illumos have add to add Linux translation layers. Sad state where POSIX hardly matters for portable UNIX code.

To mirror the sibling comment, where's the POSIX container/zone/vm whatever specification? If the BSDs and Linux can agree on a meaningful subset, macOS might actually follow

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#97

Post by pjmlp »

AYBABTME wrote: post #79
pjmlp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because it is a Linux VM, and people insist on using Linux specific stuff instead of UNIX, to the point younger generations have no clue about the difference. Even the BSDs and Solaris/Illumos have add to add Linux translation layers. Sad state where POSIX hardly matters for portable UNIX code.

Can you make containers in Darwin?

Yes, the macOS way, with Virtualization Framework.

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#98

Post by pjmlp »

unilynx wrote: post #96
pjmlp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because it is a Linux VM, and people insist on using Linux specific stuff instead of UNIX, to the point younger generations have no clue about the difference. Even the BSDs and Solaris/Illumos have add to add Linux translation layers. Sad state where POSIX hardly matters for portable UNIX code.

To mirror the sibling comment, where's the POSIX container/zone/vm whatever specification? If the BSDs and Linux can agree on a meaningful subset, macOS might actually follow

There isn't any in POSIX, then again, it isn't as if we now need containers for every executable for any magical reason.

Also, just like in the good old days, it isn't hard to have something dealing with HP-UX Vaults, Aix logical partitions, Solaris/Ilumnos Zones, BSD jails, macOS Virtualiztion Framework,....

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#99

Post by julian37 »

kdrag0n's first post about this on HN, afaict: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34100779

Amazing how far they've got since, in just two years. As others have pointed out, it's already "boring" software in that it just works. And that's no small feat because this kind of tool requires all kinds of low-level hackery to make work, and make work fast. Hats off!

(Happy user here if you couldn't tell.)

Re: OrbStack: The fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux

#100

Post by pjmlp »

raffraffraff wrote: post #19
withinboredom wrote: post #7

I love how there is absolutely no mention that it is mac-only (or even what versions of mac are supported), even on the download page.

Was just about to post this. Apple heads tend to think that Mac is the default. Funny when you realise that the problem OrbStack is trying to fix is that MacOS isn't Linux.

Rather people using a UNIX, that isn't GNU/Linux, instead of sponsoring Linux OEMs.
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