OrbStack – Docker Desktop and Colima Alternative for macOS

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  • orbstack

    Fast, light, simple Docker containers & Linux machines for macOS

  • Hey, dev here. 265% CPU usage doing nothing is definitely not normal and could be a bug of some sort. Can you share what you were doing before closing it, and even better, send log files (OrbStack menu -> Show Logs) to logs@orbstack.dev or open an issue on GitHub [1]? Happy to look into this and fix it.

    Not sure what you mean about the images: you can pull images with the Docker CLI, and we'll add a GUI for managing images soon. To migrate images from Docker Desktop: https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/90

    There's not enough space to put "Initial memory" in the landing page tab but the docs do clarify that the measurement is for initial memory usage: https://docs.orbstack.dev/benchmarks#initial-memory-usage

    Re memory usage: One of our advantages over Docker Desktop is that memory is allocated on demand, so I think it's fair. (Unfortunately this doesn't include releasing memory dynamically due to a macOS bug combined with security restrictions: https://docs.orbstack.dev/efficiency#dynamic-memory)

    [1] https://orbstack.dev/issues/bug

  • Vagrant

    Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing development environments.

  • This looks awesome. The state of virtualization on Apple Silicon right now is a bit painful. If this really does provide semi performant x86 Linux emulation and there was a Vagrant Provider plugin then this would easily be the defacto tool for dev / testing VMs on macOS.

    https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/tree/main/plugins/provi...

    Same probably applies to hashicorp Packer.

    Every tool I have tried like Parallels and VMWare Fusion 13 Pro says that nested virtualization for windows is not possible. If this is possible with Orb at some point i’d pay for it.

    I often want to test a Windows VM with Docker installed into WSL2 and this becomes a nightmare now on Apple Silicon.

    Also I wonder what possibility this opens up for an improved toolchain to develop stuff like Asahi Linux by bridging macOS native tooling and Linux emulation to write and test code without rebooting or using two machines.

    Amazing work. Why can’t Apple, Vzmware, parallels or someone else do all of this when a single developer can. Sad.

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NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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