9 ms·

Docker for Mac Without Docker Desktop

307 points by robfig 5y ago

speedgoose 5y ago
I use Rancher Desktop as an alternative to Docker Desktop. It’s alright.
- bproven 5y ago
  I just pulled it (and switched to dockerd as default container runtime to use 'docker') - it seems to work as a great swap for docker desktop on mac. I like that volumes work well vs podman. Nice that you an trivy scan an image, etc. Have you hit any sharp edges yet? I imagine there might be a few. Anything you can share would be great
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Port forwarding is currently broken if you use dockerd but it will be fixed in the next release or you can run a command to fix it yourself. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/1250 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/12... It fails to setup some filesystem links because of Unix permissions. You can fix it in command line. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/1155 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/11... If you put your computer into sleep, the VM time will be out of sync. It's going to be fixed in the next release I believe. It's an old classic bug that happened to me with WSL so it was nice to see it again. https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/839 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/83...
    - bproven 5y ago
      thanks! Looks like the first and last issue is fixed in 1.0.0 (released 2 days ago). So only that second issue remains for now.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        That’s good news. I did miss the release.
- yebyen 5y ago
  I have just started using it, and I stopped short of telling people it was a great alternative because I don't have enough experience with it yet to say one way or another. But so far it's pretty muchliving up to my expectations, with a few quirks: (1) I can use the buildkit plugin, at least it seems to work so far, but (2) things are not strictly compatible, for example the `kuby build` command has an issue and will need to be updated to support rancher desktop... it's refusing to log in right now, even though I logged into my registry already, with an error about not doing interactive logins without a TTY. I'm assuming there's an easy workaround, (but this part works fine with Docker Desktop already.) By your "it's alright" I suspect you've seen other things I'll bump into that made you say "alright" rather than "great." Anything interesting you're able to share?
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    I indeed did bump into a few things. You can check my other comment about that : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30118961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30118961
user3939382 5y ago
The heart of this is docker-machine which is deprecated
- lioeters 5y ago
  Yup.. > Docker Machine has been deprecated. Please use Docker Desktop instead. https://docs.docker.com/machine/ https://docs.docker.com/machine/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- vanpythonista 5y ago
  Gitlab maintains a fork of docker-machine with critical bug fixes that I've been using recently since Docker deprecated it: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-cd/docker-machine https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-cd/docker-machine
TameAntelope 5y ago
Is there anything complex about setting this up that you'd want to use this, or is this more of a time saver? I was thinking about doing this, and still might on my own, unless there's some hard problem solved here. Nothing wrong at all with using this, though, very cool!
twsted 5y ago
I'm using Multipass [https://multipass.run https://multipass.run], docker cli, configured with a docker context.
riffic 5y ago
I know people doing docker dev are generally targeting a Linux of some sort, but why the heck doesn't the macOS kernel support native containerization? Come on Apple. Microsoft can do it. edit: this seems like a new development since my last whine/complaint on this topic: https://macoscontainers.org/ https://macoscontainers.org/
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  That URL got me excited, but didn't seem to be a lot of progress on it in the last 6 months or s.
- minerva23 5y ago
  > why the heck doesn't the macOS kernel support native containerization? Because Apple has no plans of growing their server OS marketshare. I know there are benefits of using namespaces (containers) in the desktop market, but they don't sell iMacs/MBPs. Exterior design and heavy marketing is their sales strategy.
  - riffic 5y ago
    containerization won't just help in the server-space. It has use-cases in app development like CI.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Apple would like you to move to XCode Cloud[0] in the future, running CI pipelines on your local device is soooo last-century. [0] https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/ https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/
  - Langdal 5y ago
    Also creating their own SoC that outperforms others in the space.
  - Toine 5y ago
    "Exterior design and heavy marketing is their sales strategy" this is old, boring and not even true.
navbaker 5y ago
I've done most of my dev work on my physical Windows box using Docker Desktop, but have access to a robust cloud VM network where all my Unix work is done. The end result of a dev process is an image regardless of what tool you used, right? So how does Docker know if you've used Windows or Unix to write and test a given image? Is there metadata written into the image?
- matsemann 5y ago
  They probably don't know. And it's fine to use docker desktop without paying as long as you're a small business or a private person. They can't automatically know if you're in violation or not. They just assume people want to be in compliance. Same way I wouldn't misuse gpl code at my work.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I'm sure they just buy a list of $10million+ company ip reservations and let their lawyers go to town.
ggregoire 5y ago
> Motivation: Docker for Mac was proving to be a workflow pain rather than a workflow gain. It was slowing down my 16" Macbook Pro (32GB RAM, 6 CPUs), draining the battery, and causing the fans to constantly spin at full speed. A performance comparison between this solution and Docker for Mac would have been great.
snuxoll 5y ago
Unfortunately this like other alternatives still misses some key features of Docker Desktop for Mac like utilizing VPNKit (https://github.com/moby/vpnkit https://github.com/moby/vpnkit) to make networking not constantly break when on a VPN without split tunneling, etc. I've started using minikube myself as I stopped constantly needing to use Cisco AnyConnect for work as we switched to using a Zscaler product instead - but this is a huge bugbear for many users I'd like to see somebody address.
- sneak 5y ago
  Important consideration: Docker Desktop isn't free software and isn't even source available. It also includes on-by-default nonconsensual spyware that uploads a significant amount of private information about your system and network when it crashes. Command line docker, the docker server (for Linux) and a Linux VM are all free software.
  - szczepano 5y ago
    Docker Desktop is just closed source fork of abandoned kitematic. https://github.com/docker/kitematic https://github.com/docker/kitematic
blakesterz 5y ago
"Motivation: Docker for Mac was proving to be a workflow pain rather than a workflow gain." I feel that pain. I switched from a Linux box to a Mac Mini for ALMOST all the work I do. I just couldn't take the pain, now when I need to do my Docker work, I just flip back to my Linux box. I have a Logi keyboard and Mouse with that 3 device button option, and a monitor with a few inputs, so I just turn on the ol' Linux box, press a few buttons, and I'm there. I do the same thing for Windows, for the rare occasion I need Windows (mostly for testing stuff). I could probably find ways around the pain points, but I just can't be bothered when it's so easy to just use the other machine sitting right here. No point in wasting any more time on it.
- neurostimulant 5y ago
  > I have a Logi keyboard and Mouse with that 3 device button option, and a monitor with a few inputs, so I just turn on the ol' Linux box, press a few buttons, and I'm there. Install Barrier on both Mac and Linux, get an extra monitor, and then you can seamlessly work on both system at once as if it's a single computer with multiple monitors. Don't even need to press that switch button on your keyboard and mouse. https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
- graftak 5y ago
  I was thinking to do the same but with Linux in a VM on top of MacOS, figuring that docker runs like crap on it anyway so I might as well. Edit: upon inspection I see that is what the link is about, so it probably has some merit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Ramiro 5y ago
  @blakesterz what kind of pain are you feeling when developing with containers on a Mac vs using your Linux box? I know perf is worse, but are you hitting other things?
steviedotboston 5y ago
Should this be faster than Docker Desktop?
- cmiles74 5y ago
  YMMV but my big pain point is sharing a large project between my Mac and the VM running Docker Desktop. I don't think this will make the file sharing bit any faster.
oplav 5y ago
I've been exploring 2 alternatives (podman and colima) to replace my normal docker workflow, which is just building and running containers locally, sometimes with docker-compose. I started with podman but had issues with 2 main pieces of my workflow: docker-compose (or podman-compose) and shared volumes (with `run -v`). Switched over to colima and those worked out of the box for me ("brew install docker; brew install docker-compose; brew install colima; colima start; docker run ...")
- rgoomar 5y ago
  +1 to Colima. Works seamlessly. Made the switch not too long ago.
- salzig 5y ago
  podman: https://podman.io/ https://podman.io/ colima: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
- sbmsr 5y ago
  What drew you to switch up your workflow? I am on a m1 macbook air and I've been using Docker + Docker Desktop without much issue, and my use-case is a little simpler than yours (only running single containers at a time). I'm genuinely curious to learn more about what these tools (Colima, podman) help enable. If I'm missing out on a performance boost, I'd definitely check them out.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    In case you missed it the license terms for Docker Desktop have changed and require companies with ~250 employees to start paying for it: https://www.docker.com/blog/updating-product-subscriptions/ https://www.docker.com/blog/updating-product-subscriptions/
    - Macha 5y ago
      And in those larger companies, just paying for the "coffee a month" may not be an option, since they insist all licenses are company owned and it's less effort to change my docker VM wrapper than get shit past my company's purchasing department in a reasonable amount of time.
InsaneOstrich 5y ago
This won't work on the new M1 macs since it uses VirtualBox
- jedisct1 5y ago
  Yeah :( Ever since I switched to an M1, I haven't found a way to reliably build and run x86_64 containers on it. Docker desktop with Qemu is not just painfully slow, it's also very buggy and some containers just can't be built without crashing. Is there any alternative?
  - InsaneOstrich 5y ago
    My organization decided to hold off on purchasing M1 MacBooks for developers until they're better supported by third party software. Too much stuff just crashes or doesn't work well, even with QEMU and Rosetta.
    - rvz 5y ago
      Exactly. After the November 2020 release of the M1 Macs, Docker and many developer tools were still not available and you would have to wait 6 - 8 months for Docker to be fully supported and out of beta for M1 Macs. Not quite ideal to wait for your tools to be available on your machine for more months in order to do any work on it. The smartest thing anyone would have done to save themselves from disappointment and frustration as a developer is by simply using your existing Intel Macs and 'waiting' for the software ecosystem to catch up with the Apple Silicon Macs.
  - bbatsell 5y ago
    I haven't tested it, but Lima purports to support it: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/multi-arch.md https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/multi-arch....
    - jbreiding 5y ago
      Give https://github.com/abiosoft/colima https://github.com/abiosoft/colima A try, I’ve been using it for a few months on both m1 and x64. It works really well.
rckrd 5y ago
One of the past maintainers of minikube here. Minikube, while targeted towards Kubernetes developers, also provides all the features you'd want here. It also takes away most of the pain from virtual machine management w/ native hypervisors. If you're looking for customizability (boot image, docker version, container runtime), minikube is probably your best bet. It even comes with some rudimentary file-sharing and port-forwarding primitives, but it isn't as batteries-included as Docker desktop. On the other hand, you have full ssh access to the VM to do whatever you want (+startup scripts, etc.) Awhile back, I wrote up a comparison of all the Docker Desktop Alternatives. [1] [1] https://matt-rickard.com/docker-desktop-alternatives/ https://matt-rickard.com/docker-desktop-alternatives/
- gkop 5y ago
  Huh, I thought kind was the spiritual successor to minikube (which I used fondly years ago). When should one reach for minikube over kind today?
  - rckrd 5y ago
    kind (Kubernetes-in-Docker) still requires Docker, so its not a replacement for Docker Desktop (Windows/macOS). You'll need to run kind in minikube or kind in Docker Desktop.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    I prefer Minikube over Kind, because Minikube supports a lot more options and features, and has integrated the same features as Kind. Kind has not had a new release for almost a year.
    - moondev 5y ago
      The kind binary is decoupled from the node images that make up your cluster. V1.23.3 published 3 days ago https://hub.docker.com/r/kindest/node/tags https://hub.docker.com/r/kindest/node/tags You can also provide any kubeadm config options you want, as kind bootstraps with upstream kubeadm
  - 5y ago
toppy 5y ago
As an alternative one can also consider Rancher Desktop (https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/rancher-desktop-1-0-0-has-arrived/ https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/rancher-desktop-1-0-0-ha...) mentioned here few days ago.
- superdug 5y ago
  +1 for Rancher Desktop. [ https://rancherdesktop.io/ https://rancherdesktop.io/ ] you can alias the `docker` command with `nerdctl` as a one:one replacement.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    I tried it out to today after struggling for more than a month with Docker for Mac with problem after problem. I know how exactly many turtles there are all the way down. Rancher fixed everything first try. Containerd/nerdctl doesn't work for us (too tired to figure out why), but Rancher can run Moby/docker.
    - Ozzie_osman 5y ago
      You have an interesting handle.. Any association to the neighborhood of Zamalek?
tluyben2 5y ago
I use only arm images with Docker but I get 100% CPU on my m1 ; on top it says Docker - 100%. Usually it takes a while (few hours) to go from 5% to 100% but it always gets there and the only way to stop it is shutdown Docker desktop and starting it again. It also crashes quite a lot (docker ps will then say Docker is not running and I have to restart Docker desktop to get it back as well). I really like the hardware on this machine but I'm contemplating selling it and getting a Frame.work with Linux just to get rid of this pain. It is a far faster & smoother experience on my 11 year old X220 with Linux than on this m1. I am not sure why this happens; I see many more people have it but there seems to be no clear reason? Does this help or is the issue lower level?
jedahan 5y ago
I wrote a dumb shell script that wraps Canonical's multipass to do what Docker Desktop used to. Its limited but reliable on my M1 mac. https://github.com/jedahan/podman-desktop https://github.com/jedahan/podman-desktop
tomrod 5y ago
Podman or minikube are the solutions I've gone with. Great software!
vhsdev 5y ago
The proper way to develop with docker on Mac is using a Linux dual-boot.
therealmarv 5y ago
We also need an M1 compatible UTM version of that. To bad it seems UTM cannot be automated with vagrant like VirtualBox.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  UTM is just QEMU under the hood, which should be easy to automate.
explaingarlic 5y ago
I suppose peeps are starting to notice this because they're no longer able to use Docker Desktop on their corporate machines and are scrambling for alternatives? We got lucky where I work, and already had a RHEL license which gives us Docker Desktop Enterprise too, I think.
may13noon 5y ago
what about lima? it seems more easier to get. https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima
- cpressland 5y ago
  I’m in the process of changing our local development containerisation strategy within the business from Docker for Desktop to Lima. So far it’s been absolutely flawless.
- tpoindex 5y ago
  Lima absolutely rocks. For me, there are a few small nits, but overall probably the best to replace Docker. Out of the box ("brew install lima; limactl start") lima gives you an Ubuntu VM with containerd and nerdctl. Nerdctl is mostly compatible with the docker cli as others on this thread have mentioned. The examples/ directory also has configs for starting up k3s or k8s. Rancher Desktop is also using Lima. Minikube also works, but I can't get host directories mounted in the VM; running nfsd on the Mac is a reasonable work-around. It does start up k8s containers, so if you just want a docker-like environment, it might be overkill.
CubsFan1060 5y ago
Has anyone done any filesystem speed comparisons on any of these? Mounting volumes on Mac in Docker Desktop is... not great. Anyone found any good comparisons?
- lordelph 5y ago
  FWIW, I recently switched from an Intel to an M1 Macbook, and found shared volumes with Docker Desktop were unusably slow (previously, I'd used VirtualBox host docker and shared files into it via NFS). However, using https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ to keep the container in sync has worked remarkably well - it's greatly improved the speed of the container.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    Awesome. I'll try it out. Thanks!
kristjansson 5y ago
It’s not local docker, but export DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@some.nix.box does the trick for like 90 percent of my local docker workflows. Big gaps are local volumes, remembering to look for ports exposed on the remote box instead of localhost, and VPN access (if the remote box box isn’t on the right network) Otherwise its a treat. No local storage eaten up, no cores pinned to 100%, no reserved memory, no (additional) VM layer, …
chrisjc 5y ago
5. Install Docker Machine docker-machine The last time one of these discussions came up and a similar solution was provided, someone pointed out that 'docker-machine' is not a dependable solution. I can't remember the exact reason, nor can I find the link, but it was something along the lines of Docker making it proprietary or abandoning the project. Can anyone provide any more detail about the state of 'docker-machine' or help clarify any issues with hitching your wagon to these 'docker-machine' solutions?
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Just visit the repo: https://github.com/docker/machine https://github.com/docker/machine It is archived and hasn't had a commit in almost 2.5 years. See also: https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/245 https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/245
grishka 5y ago
This is x86-only, right?
matsemann 5y ago
I'd rather (my company) pay than having to deal with all this myself. My Docker workflow works. Spending time on everyone moving away is actually a negative ROI.
AceJohnny2 5y ago
I find it hilarious that their solution to Docker (which is supposed to be virtualization-light: containers) bloatedness is to use a full-fledged virtual machine. Something's gone deeply wrong somewhere.
- daveidol 5y ago
  I agree, but currently Docker on Mac is more about building/testing your server infra on your macOS dev machine before deploying it to Linux where it actually runs as "lightweight" containers. Regardless, would still be great if we had native macOS container support!
  - matsemann 5y ago
    Not if you run your entire dev setup through docker, though. I'm tired of python's craziness. Always someone on the team unable to do poetry install, because some variant of their system makes it not have a wheel, and suddenly a whole c++ toolchain needs to be installed. And if you maintain lots of projects with different versions it's such a hassle. Now I volume mount the git clone folder into a container that has everything set up. And that setup works for everyone, on all OSes and not depending on local environments. PyCharm uses that image as a remote interpreter, so pressing play in pycharm just works.
    - daveidol 5y ago
      Wow, I hadn't thought of that use case. I agree Python's toolchain is just not easy to work with.
- zenlikethat 5y ago
  Not that I disagree about something being deeply wrong, but VM's your only option. Docker is more or less hardcoded to Linux, so you need a Linux kernel somewhere. Docker Desktop just runs a light one for you that you don't worry about managing much.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
mrinterweb 5y ago
In my experience, Docker for Mac has always had significant performance problems primarily because of its built in host <-> volume sync strategy. The problem has persisted for many years. Different 3rd party (open source) solutions can relieve this performance bottleneck like docker-sync and mutagen. It just blows my mind that after all these years, the docker for mac team hasn't found a decent file sync strategy to include by default. If you're working on a project with a lot of files, docker for mac's built-in sync strategy is likely crushing your CPU.
papito 5y ago
When I work on Linux as my OS, I just install CTOP, and it's all I need to work with Docker. https://github.com/bcicen/ctop https://github.com/bcicen/ctop
surfer7837 5y ago
No company is going to touch Virtualbox without a 10ft barge pole. The licensing is so easy to get wrong and before you know it you’re writing a cheque to Oracle’s legal department
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Oracle has plenty of happy customers that don't think twice about using Virtualbox. Plus they aren't the only game in town with VM tooling.
freetime2 5y ago
The favorite replacement that I have found for docker desktop is to run docker-ce in lima vm [1]. It’s only a couple of commands to get up and running with their docker example [2]. Basically: brew install lima limactl start docker.yaml lima is built on qemu, which is always a solid choice for virtualization. It also supports M1 Macs, and even Intel on Arm emulation (at a pretty hefty performance cost). One of nice features of lima is that it automatically forwards ports from the host vm to guest, so when you start up a container listening on port 5432, for example, you can access it at localhost:5432. This works nicely in particular for local development while using a VPN client, which I have found has a tendency to interfere with local network traffic (if split tunneling is disabled). lima is used under the hood in rancher desktop, which is another great option if you would prefer to have a gui. But I have settled on lima as I prefer the CLI for scripted installations, and also find it to be more customizable. I have also seen colima mentioned in the comments, which appears to wrap lima with some prebuilt configurations. I don’t really think this is necessary, and seems like something that could just as easily be done with a gist, but if you are looking for the absolute quickest way to get up and running with docker (and optionally kubernetes) on lima, then this could be it. [1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima [2] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/examples/docker.yaml https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/examples/docker....
ConanRus 5y ago
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
The Docker/virtualisation stuff on macOS really needs fixing up. The x86 to ARM transition has made things worse but it was pitiful even before. Virtualization.framework doesn't seem to live up to the hype. Docker has an experimental mode for it - if you try enabling it you'll quickly realise why it's experimental. Your computer will go into meltdown and performance will feel a hundred times slower. M1 MacBooks are no good for Docker/VMs unless you have a Parallels license. Apple needs to do what Microsoft did surrounding Linux on Windows. Allocate some engineers for a few years to make life easier for developers on their platform.
- musicale 5y ago
  > Apple needs to do what Microsoft did surrounding Linux on Windows. Allocate some engineers for a few years to make life easier for developers on their platform. Apple will most likely continue to do what it always does: make billions of dollars while largely ignoring Linux. iOS and macOS developers will continue to use Xcode the way they always have. (And perhaps Swift Playgrounds on iOS.)
  - c7DJTLrn 5y ago
    Maybe, but that's what we all said about Microsoft ten years ago.
    - musicale 5y ago
      Who knows, maybe Apple will upgrade sandboxing to jails/containers and add a FreeBSD-style Linux compatibility layer. Or maybe they'll go full-on MS and include a Linux kernel alongside Xnu using Hypervisor.framework. (Note that in my experience the networking design of Ubuntu on WSL broke containers that worked fine on regular Ubuntu in Virtualbox/VMware/etc., but YMMV.) Something like that is certainly possible, though they'd have to have some reason for it, and they don't appear to at the moment.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        macOS doesn't need WSL, it is already a certified UNIX.
hoofhearthed 5y ago
Uhm I’m not a sys-admin nor an extreme senior engineer, but you have to admit. The current setup for running docker on macOS, with the current virtualization, is completely broken.
- freetime2 5y ago
  We have been using it for years with few major issues, so I would definitely not call it completely broken. “Suboptimal”, maybe. But we made the decision that the benefits of containerization outweigh the cost of having to run containers in a VM during development, and have been mostly happy with that decision. We’re certainly not considering going back to the old way of having to manage application runtime dependencies separately across hundreds of different servers.
nunez 5y ago
This is a very heavy alternative. It is also not viable for those with ARM machines, as Virtualbox is x86 only. Minikube is a popular alternative. Colima is an up-and-coming one that's can run both raw containerd and Docker engine on top of containerd. I prefer Colima since I'd rather not have Kubernetes running full-time (consumes resources).
tallytarik 5y ago
As others have pointed out, Virtualbox doesn't work on ARM (M1). A few months ago I switched to a new setup on my M1 Max: running a Ubuntu VM in UTM (https://mac.getutm.app/ https://mac.getutm.app/), and installing Docker there. I use Mutagen (https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/) for syncing files between macOS and the VM, which works really well. There is a 10x-20x speed improvement running a large PHP (Drupal) project through the VM than Docker for Mac.
- cdubzzz 5y ago
  Any additional guidance or resources you can point to for setup with UTM and Mutagen? Lando on macOS with Docker Desktop is driving me insane...
  - tallytarik 5y ago
    It was pretty straightforward, following UTM's setup guide for Ubuntu, Docker's setup guide, and Mutagen's: - https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/ubuntu-20-04 https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/ubuntu-20-04 - https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ - https://mutagen.io/documentation/introduction/installation https://mutagen.io/documentation/introduction/installation I create my Mutagen sync with a command like: mutagen sync create --name=mysite ~/Sites/mysite ubuntu@192.168.64.2:~/mysite --ignore=node_modules,vendor --ignore-vcs --default-owner-alpha=tallytarik --default-group-alpha=staff As well as the `--default-owner-` switches, I had some file permission issues on the Docker side. I ended up using `setfacl` to enforce really permissive permissions on `~/mysite` on the VM side, otherwise some Docker containers would complain. It turns out Docker for Mac fakes some file permissions, which is why it wasn't a problem before. Other than that, it mostly just worked! Feel free to get in touch if you have more specific questions.
- lmarcos 5y ago
  One can use Vagrant and VMware (instead of Virtualbox) on ARM M1. VMware fusion is free and Hashicorp has released the VMware vagrant plugin for free as well.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
When they changed the docker desktop terms, I switched to Podman. Now with Rancher Desktop and kubernetes swallowing the world...what really is the point of docker at all?
saxonww 5y ago
We do two strange things (right now) that only seem to work with Docker Desktop for Mac <=4.3.2: We use registry mirrors to access a registry over an SSH tunnel. Doesn't seem to work with Docker via Colima, etc. as it's initiating connections from inside the VM, which doesn't see the SSH tunnel. Broke with Docker Desktop for Mac 4.4.2 as well, and tbh I can't explain why it ever worked, but it did. Nerdctl just learned about registry mirrors like 3 weeks ago[0], but it looks like it's having containerd do the pull so it would be in the same boat. We set up IP aliases on lo0, and bind containers to individual addresses. This lets multiple containers and their services be directly accessible from the host - and e.g. applications running in Windows on VirtualBox - without having to remap ports. I don't think any of the alternatives support this. I know Colima does not. I don't think anything including Docker Desktop have a way to expose the docker bridge adapter directly to the host. [0] https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/pull/642 https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/pull/642
gigatexal 5y ago
Ehh I prefer limactl/nerdctl to this.
adamcharnock 5y ago
I’ve been trying something new for the last few months. I brought a min-spec M1 Air and I’ve been using a hetzner dedicated server as my development machine. I run all user-interfaces locally, and use unison to keep files in sync. VSCode remote dev works well, but I’m more of a PyCharm person myself and their remove dev is just picking up. Docker just runs natively on the server. But it has been working very well with unison. I run eternal terminal with tmux, so my terminal is always available. Local bandwidth requirements are low and I get a 6-core 64GB dev machine. It’s actually been very pleasant. I have barely any dev tools locally (not even home brew, which I do not miss at all).
- freetime2 5y ago
  Can I ask what the monthly hosting costs are?
  - adamcharnock 5y ago
    It’s about €30/month, but it is very much a business expense, so it comes out of my company account (I’m a freelancer) You could probably grab a server for a bit less from their server auction.
    - gedw99 5y ago
      thats a really good idea. I have so many docker and docker compose things to run and the mac is just not powerful enough. I use hetzner already too. Do you happen to have an makefiles or scripts that set up this on your mac that you can share ?
xxandroxygen 5y ago
Multipass has been my docker desktop replacement of choice, I really like it (even in the non-M1 days I never liked docker desktop and used dinghy which was a wrapper around docker-machine)
astkaasa 5y ago
Tried colima and minikube. Minikube has some complex network issue, colima works without any problem out of box.
forty 5y ago
Admittedly I haven't tried Windows and MacOS a lot, but I still don't understand why people insist on using MacOS for doing Linux development. I think it must be pretty rare to have devs doing MacOS development not using MacOS or devs doing Windows development not using Windows, but for Linux backend there seem to be a consensus that running VMs is a good idea. Why is that? Are people doing stuff on their computers I'm not even aware we can do because I use Linux? Or am I working slower because Linux is not the right tool for development? At work I have a feeling that a lot of time is lost to have the Linux devs tools (docker in particular) working properly on other OSes (MacOS and WSL), and docker especially (and those new Mac M1 which suddenly are even slower with all the existing docker images because of course our CI is not building ARM images...).
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  > Are people doing stuff on their computers I'm not even aware we can do because I use Linux? Yes, that’s mostly it. Fractional display scaling, good battery life, switching between audio devices that might be wireless or connected to a thunderbolt dock, seamless copy/paste, this kind of stuff. Some of it works on Linux too with some work but the question is what’s more economical. No system is perfect, honestly. It’s much easier for me to use Docker on a non-Linux system (or use a local or remote VM) than fix bluetooth audio.
  - forty 5y ago
    In my experience MacOS users seems to have as much trouble with screens and thunderbolt dock as I do. We had to try nearly all double screens thunderbolt docks on the market and I think we lost hope to find one that works reliably out of the box with those 3 OSes. I cannot say for battery life, people tend to be connected to power all day here, so that's probably not the reason. Not even sure what is seamless copy/paste sorry. But okay, admittedly I don't do anything fancy with my audio devices, or my screen scaling, that must be probably it
    - musicale 5y ago
      I also have issues plugging and unplugging external USB-C displays; I've found that I have to plug them in in reverse order in order to get them to be recognized. Be that as it may, macOS has some cool display features from Sidecar (plug in an iPad and it becomes a poor man's Cintiq) to the upcoming Universal Access (seamless mouse/keyboard control over multiple devices including drag & drop and cut & paste.) Seamless copy/paste means that multiple Apple devices can share the same clipboard, so you can copy on one devices and paste on another. Drag and drop is even cooler since you can drag something off an iPad and onto a Mac or vice-versa.
hk1337 5y ago
So, what exactly are the restrictions going to be? I don’t really use the UI all that much beyond seeing that the engine is running, I don’t have any images on docker hub. I pretty much just run it locally and push images to AWS ECR.

307 points by robfig 5y ago

speedgoose 5y ago

I use Rancher Desktop as an alternative to Docker Desktop. It’s alright.

bproven 5y ago
I just pulled it (and switched to dockerd as default container runtime to use 'docker') - it seems to work as a great swap for docker desktop on mac. I like that volumes work well vs podman. Nice that you an trivy scan an image, etc. Have you hit any sharp edges yet? I imagine there might be a few. Anything you can share would be great
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Port forwarding is currently broken if you use dockerd but it will be fixed in the next release or you can run a command to fix it yourself. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/1250 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/12... It fails to setup some filesystem links because of Unix permissions. You can fix it in command line. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/1155 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/11... If you put your computer into sleep, the VM time will be out of sync. It's going to be fixed in the next release I believe. It's an old classic bug that happened to me with WSL so it was nice to see it again. https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/839 https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/83...
  - bproven 5y ago
    thanks! Looks like the first and last issue is fixed in 1.0.0 (released 2 days ago). So only that second issue remains for now.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      That’s good news. I did miss the release.
yebyen 5y ago
I have just started using it, and I stopped short of telling people it was a great alternative because I don't have enough experience with it yet to say one way or another. But so far it's pretty muchliving up to my expectations, with a few quirks: (1) I can use the buildkit plugin, at least it seems to work so far, but (2) things are not strictly compatible, for example the `kuby build` command has an issue and will need to be updated to support rancher desktop... it's refusing to log in right now, even though I logged into my registry already, with an error about not doing interactive logins without a TTY. I'm assuming there's an easy workaround, (but this part works fine with Docker Desktop already.) By your "it's alright" I suspect you've seen other things I'll bump into that made you say "alright" rather than "great." Anything interesting you're able to share?
- speedgoose 5y ago
  I indeed did bump into a few things. You can check my other comment about that : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30118961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30118961

user3939382 5y ago

The heart of this is docker-machine which is deprecated

lioeters 5y ago
Yup.. > Docker Machine has been deprecated. Please use Docker Desktop instead. https://docs.docker.com/machine/ https://docs.docker.com/machine/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vanpythonista 5y ago
Gitlab maintains a fork of docker-machine with critical bug fixes that I've been using recently since Docker deprecated it: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-cd/docker-machine https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-cd/docker-machine

TameAntelope 5y ago

Is there anything complex about setting this up that you'd want to use this, or is this more of a time saver? I was thinking about doing this, and still might on my own, unless there's some hard problem solved here. Nothing wrong at all with using this, though, very cool!

twsted 5y ago

I'm using Multipass [https://multipass.run https://multipass.run], docker cli, configured with a docker context.

riffic 5y ago

I know people doing docker dev are generally targeting a Linux of some sort, but why the heck doesn't the macOS kernel support native containerization? Come on Apple. Microsoft can do it. edit: this seems like a new development since my last whine/complaint on this topic: https://macoscontainers.org/ https://macoscontainers.org/

CubsFan1060 5y ago
That URL got me excited, but didn't seem to be a lot of progress on it in the last 6 months or s.
minerva23 5y ago
> why the heck doesn't the macOS kernel support native containerization? Because Apple has no plans of growing their server OS marketshare. I know there are benefits of using namespaces (containers) in the desktop market, but they don't sell iMacs/MBPs. Exterior design and heavy marketing is their sales strategy.
- riffic 5y ago
  containerization won't just help in the server-space. It has use-cases in app development like CI.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Apple would like you to move to XCode Cloud[0] in the future, running CI pipelines on your local device is soooo last-century. [0] https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/ https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/
- Langdal 5y ago
  Also creating their own SoC that outperforms others in the space.
- Toine 5y ago
  "Exterior design and heavy marketing is their sales strategy" this is old, boring and not even true.

navbaker 5y ago

I've done most of my dev work on my physical Windows box using Docker Desktop, but have access to a robust cloud VM network where all my Unix work is done. The end result of a dev process is an image regardless of what tool you used, right? So how does Docker know if you've used Windows or Unix to write and test a given image? Is there metadata written into the image?

matsemann 5y ago
They probably don't know. And it's fine to use docker desktop without paying as long as you're a small business or a private person. They can't automatically know if you're in violation or not. They just assume people want to be in compliance. Same way I wouldn't misuse gpl code at my work.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I'm sure they just buy a list of $10million+ company ip reservations and let their lawyers go to town.

ggregoire 5y ago

> Motivation: Docker for Mac was proving to be a workflow pain rather than a workflow gain. It was slowing down my 16" Macbook Pro (32GB RAM, 6 CPUs), draining the battery, and causing the fans to constantly spin at full speed. A performance comparison between this solution and Docker for Mac would have been great.

snuxoll 5y ago

Unfortunately this like other alternatives still misses some key features of Docker Desktop for Mac like utilizing VPNKit (https://github.com/moby/vpnkit https://github.com/moby/vpnkit) to make networking not constantly break when on a VPN without split tunneling, etc. I've started using minikube myself as I stopped constantly needing to use Cisco AnyConnect for work as we switched to using a Zscaler product instead - but this is a huge bugbear for many users I'd like to see somebody address.

sneak 5y ago
Important consideration: Docker Desktop isn't free software and isn't even source available. It also includes on-by-default nonconsensual spyware that uploads a significant amount of private information about your system and network when it crashes. Command line docker, the docker server (for Linux) and a Linux VM are all free software.
- szczepano 5y ago
  Docker Desktop is just closed source fork of abandoned kitematic. https://github.com/docker/kitematic https://github.com/docker/kitematic

blakesterz 5y ago

"Motivation: Docker for Mac was proving to be a workflow pain rather than a workflow gain." I feel that pain. I switched from a Linux box to a Mac Mini for ALMOST all the work I do. I just couldn't take the pain, now when I need to do my Docker work, I just flip back to my Linux box. I have a Logi keyboard and Mouse with that 3 device button option, and a monitor with a few inputs, so I just turn on the ol' Linux box, press a few buttons, and I'm there. I do the same thing for Windows, for the rare occasion I need Windows (mostly for testing stuff). I could probably find ways around the pain points, but I just can't be bothered when it's so easy to just use the other machine sitting right here. No point in wasting any more time on it.

neurostimulant 5y ago
> I have a Logi keyboard and Mouse with that 3 device button option, and a monitor with a few inputs, so I just turn on the ol' Linux box, press a few buttons, and I'm there. Install Barrier on both Mac and Linux, get an extra monitor, and then you can seamlessly work on both system at once as if it's a single computer with multiple monitors. Don't even need to press that switch button on your keyboard and mouse. https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
graftak 5y ago
I was thinking to do the same but with Linux in a VM on top of MacOS, figuring that docker runs like crap on it anyway so I might as well. Edit: upon inspection I see that is what the link is about, so it probably has some merit.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Ramiro 5y ago
@blakesterz what kind of pain are you feeling when developing with containers on a Mac vs using your Linux box? I know perf is worse, but are you hitting other things?

steviedotboston 5y ago

Should this be faster than Docker Desktop?

cmiles74 5y ago
YMMV but my big pain point is sharing a large project between my Mac and the VM running Docker Desktop. I don't think this will make the file sharing bit any faster.

oplav 5y ago

I've been exploring 2 alternatives (podman and colima) to replace my normal docker workflow, which is just building and running containers locally, sometimes with docker-compose. I started with podman but had issues with 2 main pieces of my workflow: docker-compose (or podman-compose) and shared volumes (with `run -v`). Switched over to colima and those worked out of the box for me ("brew install docker; brew install docker-compose; brew install colima; colima start; docker run ...")

rgoomar 5y ago
+1 to Colima. Works seamlessly. Made the switch not too long ago.
salzig 5y ago
podman: https://podman.io/ https://podman.io/ colima: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
sbmsr 5y ago
What drew you to switch up your workflow? I am on a m1 macbook air and I've been using Docker + Docker Desktop without much issue, and my use-case is a little simpler than yours (only running single containers at a time). I'm genuinely curious to learn more about what these tools (Colima, podman) help enable. If I'm missing out on a performance boost, I'd definitely check them out.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  In case you missed it the license terms for Docker Desktop have changed and require companies with ~250 employees to start paying for it: https://www.docker.com/blog/updating-product-subscriptions/ https://www.docker.com/blog/updating-product-subscriptions/
  - Macha 5y ago
    And in those larger companies, just paying for the "coffee a month" may not be an option, since they insist all licenses are company owned and it's less effort to change my docker VM wrapper than get shit past my company's purchasing department in a reasonable amount of time.

InsaneOstrich 5y ago

This won't work on the new M1 macs since it uses VirtualBox

jedisct1 5y ago
Yeah :( Ever since I switched to an M1, I haven't found a way to reliably build and run x86_64 containers on it. Docker desktop with Qemu is not just painfully slow, it's also very buggy and some containers just can't be built without crashing. Is there any alternative?
- InsaneOstrich 5y ago
  My organization decided to hold off on purchasing M1 MacBooks for developers until they're better supported by third party software. Too much stuff just crashes or doesn't work well, even with QEMU and Rosetta.
  - rvz 5y ago
    Exactly. After the November 2020 release of the M1 Macs, Docker and many developer tools were still not available and you would have to wait 6 - 8 months for Docker to be fully supported and out of beta for M1 Macs. Not quite ideal to wait for your tools to be available on your machine for more months in order to do any work on it. The smartest thing anyone would have done to save themselves from disappointment and frustration as a developer is by simply using your existing Intel Macs and 'waiting' for the software ecosystem to catch up with the Apple Silicon Macs.
- bbatsell 5y ago
  I haven't tested it, but Lima purports to support it: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/multi-arch.md https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/multi-arch....
  - jbreiding 5y ago
    Give https://github.com/abiosoft/colima https://github.com/abiosoft/colima A try, I’ve been using it for a few months on both m1 and x64. It works really well.

rckrd 5y ago

One of the past maintainers of minikube here. Minikube, while targeted towards Kubernetes developers, also provides all the features you'd want here. It also takes away most of the pain from virtual machine management w/ native hypervisors. If you're looking for customizability (boot image, docker version, container runtime), minikube is probably your best bet. It even comes with some rudimentary file-sharing and port-forwarding primitives, but it isn't as batteries-included as Docker desktop. On the other hand, you have full ssh access to the VM to do whatever you want (+startup scripts, etc.) Awhile back, I wrote up a comparison of all the Docker Desktop Alternatives. [1] [1] https://matt-rickard.com/docker-desktop-alternatives/ https://matt-rickard.com/docker-desktop-alternatives/

gkop 5y ago
Huh, I thought kind was the spiritual successor to minikube (which I used fondly years ago). When should one reach for minikube over kind today?
- rckrd 5y ago
  kind (Kubernetes-in-Docker) still requires Docker, so its not a replacement for Docker Desktop (Windows/macOS). You'll need to run kind in minikube or kind in Docker Desktop.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I prefer Minikube over Kind, because Minikube supports a lot more options and features, and has integrated the same features as Kind. Kind has not had a new release for almost a year.
  - moondev 5y ago
    The kind binary is decoupled from the node images that make up your cluster. V1.23.3 published 3 days ago https://hub.docker.com/r/kindest/node/tags https://hub.docker.com/r/kindest/node/tags You can also provide any kubeadm config options you want, as kind bootstraps with upstream kubeadm
- 5y ago

toppy 5y ago

As an alternative one can also consider Rancher Desktop (https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/rancher-desktop-1-0-0-has-arrived/ https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/rancher-desktop-1-0-0-ha...) mentioned here few days ago.

superdug 5y ago
+1 for Rancher Desktop. [ https://rancherdesktop.io/ https://rancherdesktop.io/ ] you can alias the `docker` command with `nerdctl` as a one:one replacement.
- zamalek 5y ago
  I tried it out to today after struggling for more than a month with Docker for Mac with problem after problem. I know how exactly many turtles there are all the way down. Rancher fixed everything first try. Containerd/nerdctl doesn't work for us (too tired to figure out why), but Rancher can run Moby/docker.
  - Ozzie_osman 5y ago
    You have an interesting handle.. Any association to the neighborhood of Zamalek?

tluyben2 5y ago

I use only arm images with Docker but I get 100% CPU on my m1 ; on top it says Docker - 100%. Usually it takes a while (few hours) to go from 5% to 100% but it always gets there and the only way to stop it is shutdown Docker desktop and starting it again. It also crashes quite a lot (docker ps will then say Docker is not running and I have to restart Docker desktop to get it back as well). I really like the hardware on this machine but I'm contemplating selling it and getting a Frame.work with Linux just to get rid of this pain. It is a far faster & smoother experience on my 11 year old X220 with Linux than on this m1. I am not sure why this happens; I see many more people have it but there seems to be no clear reason? Does this help or is the issue lower level?

jedahan 5y ago

I wrote a dumb shell script that wraps Canonical's multipass to do what Docker Desktop used to. Its limited but reliable on my M1 mac. https://github.com/jedahan/podman-desktop https://github.com/jedahan/podman-desktop

tomrod 5y ago

Podman or minikube are the solutions I've gone with. Great software!

vhsdev 5y ago

The proper way to develop with docker on Mac is using a Linux dual-boot.

therealmarv 5y ago

We also need an M1 compatible UTM version of that. To bad it seems UTM cannot be automated with vagrant like VirtualBox.

saagarjha 5y ago
UTM is just QEMU under the hood, which should be easy to automate.

explaingarlic 5y ago

I suppose peeps are starting to notice this because they're no longer able to use Docker Desktop on their corporate machines and are scrambling for alternatives? We got lucky where I work, and already had a RHEL license which gives us Docker Desktop Enterprise too, I think.

may13noon 5y ago

what about lima? it seems more easier to get. https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

cpressland 5y ago
I’m in the process of changing our local development containerisation strategy within the business from Docker for Desktop to Lima. So far it’s been absolutely flawless.
tpoindex 5y ago
Lima absolutely rocks. For me, there are a few small nits, but overall probably the best to replace Docker. Out of the box ("brew install lima; limactl start") lima gives you an Ubuntu VM with containerd and nerdctl. Nerdctl is mostly compatible with the docker cli as others on this thread have mentioned. The examples/ directory also has configs for starting up k3s or k8s. Rancher Desktop is also using Lima. Minikube also works, but I can't get host directories mounted in the VM; running nfsd on the Mac is a reasonable work-around. It does start up k8s containers, so if you just want a docker-like environment, it might be overkill.

CubsFan1060 5y ago

Has anyone done any filesystem speed comparisons on any of these? Mounting volumes on Mac in Docker Desktop is... not great. Anyone found any good comparisons?

lordelph 5y ago
FWIW, I recently switched from an Intel to an M1 Macbook, and found shared volumes with Docker Desktop were unusably slow (previously, I'd used VirtualBox host docker and shared files into it via NFS). However, using https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ to keep the container in sync has worked remarkably well - it's greatly improved the speed of the container.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  Awesome. I'll try it out. Thanks!

kristjansson 5y ago

It’s not local docker, but export DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@some.nix.box does the trick for like 90 percent of my local docker workflows. Big gaps are local volumes, remembering to look for ports exposed on the remote box instead of localhost, and VPN access (if the remote box box isn’t on the right network) Otherwise its a treat. No local storage eaten up, no cores pinned to 100%, no reserved memory, no (additional) VM layer, …

chrisjc 5y ago

5. Install Docker Machine docker-machine The last time one of these discussions came up and a similar solution was provided, someone pointed out that 'docker-machine' is not a dependable solution. I can't remember the exact reason, nor can I find the link, but it was something along the lines of Docker making it proprietary or abandoning the project. Can anyone provide any more detail about the state of 'docker-machine' or help clarify any issues with hitching your wagon to these 'docker-machine' solutions?

qbasic_forever 5y ago
Just visit the repo: https://github.com/docker/machine https://github.com/docker/machine It is archived and hasn't had a commit in almost 2.5 years. See also: https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/245 https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/245

grishka 5y ago

This is x86-only, right?

matsemann 5y ago

I'd rather (my company) pay than having to deal with all this myself. My Docker workflow works. Spending time on everyone moving away is actually a negative ROI.

AceJohnny2 5y ago

I find it hilarious that their solution to Docker (which is supposed to be virtualization-light: containers) bloatedness is to use a full-fledged virtual machine. Something's gone deeply wrong somewhere.

daveidol 5y ago
I agree, but currently Docker on Mac is more about building/testing your server infra on your macOS dev machine before deploying it to Linux where it actually runs as "lightweight" containers. Regardless, would still be great if we had native macOS container support!
- matsemann 5y ago
  Not if you run your entire dev setup through docker, though. I'm tired of python's craziness. Always someone on the team unable to do poetry install, because some variant of their system makes it not have a wheel, and suddenly a whole c++ toolchain needs to be installed. And if you maintain lots of projects with different versions it's such a hassle. Now I volume mount the git clone folder into a container that has everything set up. And that setup works for everyone, on all OSes and not depending on local environments. PyCharm uses that image as a remote interpreter, so pressing play in pycharm just works.
  - daveidol 5y ago
    Wow, I hadn't thought of that use case. I agree Python's toolchain is just not easy to work with.
zenlikethat 5y ago
Not that I disagree about something being deeply wrong, but VM's your only option. Docker is more or less hardcoded to Linux, so you need a Linux kernel somewhere. Docker Desktop just runs a light one for you that you don't worry about managing much.
- vbezhenar 5y ago

mrinterweb 5y ago

In my experience, Docker for Mac has always had significant performance problems primarily because of its built in host <-> volume sync strategy. The problem has persisted for many years. Different 3rd party (open source) solutions can relieve this performance bottleneck like docker-sync and mutagen. It just blows my mind that after all these years, the docker for mac team hasn't found a decent file sync strategy to include by default. If you're working on a project with a lot of files, docker for mac's built-in sync strategy is likely crushing your CPU.

papito 5y ago

When I work on Linux as my OS, I just install CTOP, and it's all I need to work with Docker. https://github.com/bcicen/ctop https://github.com/bcicen/ctop

surfer7837 5y ago

No company is going to touch Virtualbox without a 10ft barge pole. The licensing is so easy to get wrong and before you know it you’re writing a cheque to Oracle’s legal department

pjmlp 5y ago
Oracle has plenty of happy customers that don't think twice about using Virtualbox. Plus they aren't the only game in town with VM tooling.

freetime2 5y ago

The favorite replacement that I have found for docker desktop is to run docker-ce in lima vm [1]. It’s only a couple of commands to get up and running with their docker example [2]. Basically: brew install lima limactl start docker.yaml lima is built on qemu, which is always a solid choice for virtualization. It also supports M1 Macs, and even Intel on Arm emulation (at a pretty hefty performance cost). One of nice features of lima is that it automatically forwards ports from the host vm to guest, so when you start up a container listening on port 5432, for example, you can access it at localhost:5432. This works nicely in particular for local development while using a VPN client, which I have found has a tendency to interfere with local network traffic (if split tunneling is disabled). lima is used under the hood in rancher desktop, which is another great option if you would prefer to have a gui. But I have settled on lima as I prefer the CLI for scripted installations, and also find it to be more customizable. I have also seen colima mentioned in the comments, which appears to wrap lima with some prebuilt configurations. I don’t really think this is necessary, and seems like something that could just as easily be done with a gist, but if you are looking for the absolute quickest way to get up and running with docker (and optionally kubernetes) on lima, then this could be it. [1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima [2] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/examples/docker.yaml https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/examples/docker....

ConanRus 5y ago

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

The Docker/virtualisation stuff on macOS really needs fixing up. The x86 to ARM transition has made things worse but it was pitiful even before. Virtualization.framework doesn't seem to live up to the hype. Docker has an experimental mode for it - if you try enabling it you'll quickly realise why it's experimental. Your computer will go into meltdown and performance will feel a hundred times slower. M1 MacBooks are no good for Docker/VMs unless you have a Parallels license. Apple needs to do what Microsoft did surrounding Linux on Windows. Allocate some engineers for a few years to make life easier for developers on their platform.

musicale 5y ago
> Apple needs to do what Microsoft did surrounding Linux on Windows. Allocate some engineers for a few years to make life easier for developers on their platform. Apple will most likely continue to do what it always does: make billions of dollars while largely ignoring Linux. iOS and macOS developers will continue to use Xcode the way they always have. (And perhaps Swift Playgrounds on iOS.)
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Maybe, but that's what we all said about Microsoft ten years ago.
  - musicale 5y ago
    Who knows, maybe Apple will upgrade sandboxing to jails/containers and add a FreeBSD-style Linux compatibility layer. Or maybe they'll go full-on MS and include a Linux kernel alongside Xnu using Hypervisor.framework. (Note that in my experience the networking design of Ubuntu on WSL broke containers that worked fine on regular Ubuntu in Virtualbox/VMware/etc., but YMMV.) Something like that is certainly possible, though they'd have to have some reason for it, and they don't appear to at the moment.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      macOS doesn't need WSL, it is already a certified UNIX.

hoofhearthed 5y ago

Uhm I’m not a sys-admin nor an extreme senior engineer, but you have to admit. The current setup for running docker on macOS, with the current virtualization, is completely broken.

freetime2 5y ago
We have been using it for years with few major issues, so I would definitely not call it completely broken. “Suboptimal”, maybe. But we made the decision that the benefits of containerization outweigh the cost of having to run containers in a VM during development, and have been mostly happy with that decision. We’re certainly not considering going back to the old way of having to manage application runtime dependencies separately across hundreds of different servers.

nunez 5y ago

This is a very heavy alternative. It is also not viable for those with ARM machines, as Virtualbox is x86 only. Minikube is a popular alternative. Colima is an up-and-coming one that's can run both raw containerd and Docker engine on top of containerd. I prefer Colima since I'd rather not have Kubernetes running full-time (consumes resources).

tallytarik 5y ago

As others have pointed out, Virtualbox doesn't work on ARM (M1). A few months ago I switched to a new setup on my M1 Max: running a Ubuntu VM in UTM (https://mac.getutm.app/ https://mac.getutm.app/), and installing Docker there. I use Mutagen (https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/) for syncing files between macOS and the VM, which works really well. There is a 10x-20x speed improvement running a large PHP (Drupal) project through the VM than Docker for Mac.

cdubzzz 5y ago
Any additional guidance or resources you can point to for setup with UTM and Mutagen? Lando on macOS with Docker Desktop is driving me insane...
- tallytarik 5y ago
  It was pretty straightforward, following UTM's setup guide for Ubuntu, Docker's setup guide, and Mutagen's: - https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/ubuntu-20-04 https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/ubuntu-20-04 - https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/ - https://mutagen.io/documentation/introduction/installation https://mutagen.io/documentation/introduction/installation I create my Mutagen sync with a command like: mutagen sync create --name=mysite ~/Sites/mysite ubuntu@192.168.64.2:~/mysite --ignore=node_modules,vendor --ignore-vcs --default-owner-alpha=tallytarik --default-group-alpha=staff As well as the `--default-owner-` switches, I had some file permission issues on the Docker side. I ended up using `setfacl` to enforce really permissive permissions on `~/mysite` on the VM side, otherwise some Docker containers would complain. It turns out Docker for Mac fakes some file permissions, which is why it wasn't a problem before. Other than that, it mostly just worked! Feel free to get in touch if you have more specific questions.
lmarcos 5y ago
One can use Vagrant and VMware (instead of Virtualbox) on ARM M1. VMware fusion is free and Hashicorp has released the VMware vagrant plugin for free as well.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

When they changed the docker desktop terms, I switched to Podman. Now with Rancher Desktop and kubernetes swallowing the world...what really is the point of docker at all?

saxonww 5y ago

We do two strange things (right now) that only seem to work with Docker Desktop for Mac <=4.3.2: We use registry mirrors to access a registry over an SSH tunnel. Doesn't seem to work with Docker via Colima, etc. as it's initiating connections from inside the VM, which doesn't see the SSH tunnel. Broke with Docker Desktop for Mac 4.4.2 as well, and tbh I can't explain why it ever worked, but it did. Nerdctl just learned about registry mirrors like 3 weeks ago[0], but it looks like it's having containerd do the pull so it would be in the same boat. We set up IP aliases on lo0, and bind containers to individual addresses. This lets multiple containers and their services be directly accessible from the host - and e.g. applications running in Windows on VirtualBox - without having to remap ports. I don't think any of the alternatives support this. I know Colima does not. I don't think anything including Docker Desktop have a way to expose the docker bridge adapter directly to the host. [0] https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/pull/642 https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/pull/642

gigatexal 5y ago

Ehh I prefer limactl/nerdctl to this.

adamcharnock 5y ago

I’ve been trying something new for the last few months. I brought a min-spec M1 Air and I’ve been using a hetzner dedicated server as my development machine. I run all user-interfaces locally, and use unison to keep files in sync. VSCode remote dev works well, but I’m more of a PyCharm person myself and their remove dev is just picking up. Docker just runs natively on the server. But it has been working very well with unison. I run eternal terminal with tmux, so my terminal is always available. Local bandwidth requirements are low and I get a 6-core 64GB dev machine. It’s actually been very pleasant. I have barely any dev tools locally (not even home brew, which I do not miss at all).

freetime2 5y ago
Can I ask what the monthly hosting costs are?
- adamcharnock 5y ago
  It’s about €30/month, but it is very much a business expense, so it comes out of my company account (I’m a freelancer) You could probably grab a server for a bit less from their server auction.
  - gedw99 5y ago
    thats a really good idea. I have so many docker and docker compose things to run and the mac is just not powerful enough. I use hetzner already too. Do you happen to have an makefiles or scripts that set up this on your mac that you can share ?

xxandroxygen 5y ago

Multipass has been my docker desktop replacement of choice, I really like it (even in the non-M1 days I never liked docker desktop and used dinghy which was a wrapper around docker-machine)

astkaasa 5y ago

Tried colima and minikube. Minikube has some complex network issue, colima works without any problem out of box.

forty 5y ago

Admittedly I haven't tried Windows and MacOS a lot, but I still don't understand why people insist on using MacOS for doing Linux development. I think it must be pretty rare to have devs doing MacOS development not using MacOS or devs doing Windows development not using Windows, but for Linux backend there seem to be a consensus that running VMs is a good idea. Why is that? Are people doing stuff on their computers I'm not even aware we can do because I use Linux? Or am I working slower because Linux is not the right tool for development? At work I have a feeling that a lot of time is lost to have the Linux devs tools (docker in particular) working properly on other OSes (MacOS and WSL), and docker especially (and those new Mac M1 which suddenly are even slower with all the existing docker images because of course our CI is not building ARM images...).

sz4kerto 5y ago
> Are people doing stuff on their computers I'm not even aware we can do because I use Linux? Yes, that’s mostly it. Fractional display scaling, good battery life, switching between audio devices that might be wireless or connected to a thunderbolt dock, seamless copy/paste, this kind of stuff. Some of it works on Linux too with some work but the question is what’s more economical. No system is perfect, honestly. It’s much easier for me to use Docker on a non-Linux system (or use a local or remote VM) than fix bluetooth audio.
- forty 5y ago
  In my experience MacOS users seems to have as much trouble with screens and thunderbolt dock as I do. We had to try nearly all double screens thunderbolt docks on the market and I think we lost hope to find one that works reliably out of the box with those 3 OSes. I cannot say for battery life, people tend to be connected to power all day here, so that's probably not the reason. Not even sure what is seamless copy/paste sorry. But okay, admittedly I don't do anything fancy with my audio devices, or my screen scaling, that must be probably it
  - musicale 5y ago
    I also have issues plugging and unplugging external USB-C displays; I've found that I have to plug them in in reverse order in order to get them to be recognized. Be that as it may, macOS has some cool display features from Sidecar (plug in an iPad and it becomes a poor man's Cintiq) to the upcoming Universal Access (seamless mouse/keyboard control over multiple devices including drag & drop and cut & paste.) Seamless copy/paste means that multiple Apple devices can share the same clipboard, so you can copy on one devices and paste on another. Drag and drop is even cooler since you can drag something off an iPad and onto a Mac or vice-versa.

hk1337 5y ago

So, what exactly are the restrictions going to be? I don’t really use the UI all that much beyond seeing that the engine is running, I don’t have any images on docker hub. I pretty much just run it locally and push images to AWS ECR.