Docker-OSX VS OSX-KVM

Compare Docker-OSX vs OSX-KVM and see what are their differences.

Docker-OSX

Run macOS VM in a Docker! Run near native OSX-KVM in Docker! X11 Forwarding! CI/CD for OS X Security Research! Docker mac Containers. (by sickcodes)

OSX-KVM

Run macOS on QEMU/KVM. With OpenCore + Monterey + Ventura + Sonoma support now! Only commercial (paid) support is available now to avoid spammy issues. No Mac system is required. (by kholia)
Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
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InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
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Docker-OSX OSX-KVM
137 268
50,903 21,952
0.7% 1.0%
6.2 5.1
about 1 month ago 3 months ago
Shell Python
GNU General Public License v3.0 only -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Docker-OSX

Posts with mentions or reviews of Docker-OSX. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-05-14.

OSX-KVM

Posts with mentions or reviews of OSX-KVM. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-01-01.
  • Developing Inside a Virtual Machine
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Jan 2025
    I used Kholia's scripts[1] on Qemu with Virsh. I didn't have much trouble other than some SELinux permission issues which I resolved quickly.

    iCloud/imessage have always been finicky with Hackintosh, but in my experience setting the correct serial number with appropriate Mac model is the key to resolve those issues.

    With just couple of years of Hackintosh scene left before support for x86 Macs are dropped completely, a VM Hackintosh makes more sense to me than building a physical Hackintosh.

    [1]https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

  • Things we learned out about LLMs in 2024
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Dec 2024
    You need macOS, which you can run in a VM (e.g. https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM ) or by setting up a hackintosh.
  • M4 Macs can't virtualise older macOS
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Nov 2024
  • OS X (macOS) inside a Docker container
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Nov 2024
  • Make a Mac OS virtual machine
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Jun 2024
  • VirtualBox KVM Public Release
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Feb 2024
    Yes, I recently had to compile some stuff on Windows (I'm on an AMD Linux host) and VirtualBox just wouldn't start Microsoft's Windows dev VM (the one they provide for free for Virtualbox). I ended up learning how to use qemu and it works great...and as a bonus I was able to run a hackintosh (via https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM) and it works near flawlessly, which was something I was never able to accomplish with Virtualbox (granted I haven't tried in a few years).

    I'm pretty happy with Qemu now, even if it's jsut a CLI interface. I was tempted to try the virt-* stuff, but honestly it seems like one more thing to learn so I'm going to hold off until I need something like copy/paste between VMs and can't figure it out in qemu direct.

  • NixThePlanet - Run macOS, Windows and more via a single Nix command + nixosModules
    3 projects | /r/NixOS | 9 Dec 2023
    Working on a patch to include it as a flake input instead of vendoring it in the repo, so this should no longer be true. I use the QCOW2s for OpenCore from osx-kvm that I have not figured out how to reproduce yet https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/OpenCore/OpenCore.qcow2
  • [PROJECT] Working on a project called ultimate-macOS-KVM!
    2 projects | /r/VFIO | 30 Sep 2023
    For almost a year, I have been coding a little project in Python intended to piggyback on the framework of kholia's OSX-KVM project, known as ultimate-macOS-KVM, or ULTMOS.
  • FreeBSD Bhyve Virtualization
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Aug 2023
    I just researched a bit, mac os x guest vm with pcie passthrough seems possible on linux.

    Dropping the links below:

    https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

    https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI-Passthrough

  • VirGL
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Aug 2023
    VirGL is definitely an interesting project, but all one has to do to get GPU passthrough working (from a Linux QEMU host to any guest OS) is: 1.) research a cheap, secondary GPU that is natively supported by the guest OS, 2.) plug such a secondary GPU into a PCIe slot on the host and hook it up to the primary monitor with a secondary cable (D-Sub vs. DVI, etc.), 3.) setup Linux to ignore the secondary GPU at boot and configure a QEMU VM for the GPU passthrough. The whole process takes perhaps one or two hours and as works flawlessly, with no stability issues. (Switching across the two GPU cables can be accomplished in software by using Display Data Channel /DDC/ utilities and switching keyboard/mouse can be accomplished by using evdev /event device/ passthrough.) More information: https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/notes.md#gpu-p...

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Docker-OSX and OSX-KVM you can also consider the following projects:

HomeBrew - 🍺 The missing package manager for macOS (or Linux)

sosumi-snap

redroid-doc - redroid (Remote-Android) is a multi-arch, GPU enabled, Android in Cloud solution. Track issues / docs here

OpenCore-Install-Guide - Repo for the OpenCore Install Guide

quickemu - Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines

macOS-Simple-KVM - Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.

Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
featured
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
featured

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