[mschuster91]

The fact how simple it is to re-implement a large part of Docker because all it fundamentally is a bit of glue code to the kernel is the biggest problem Docker-the-company faced and still faces.

Where Docker adds real value is not (just) Docker Hub but Docker for Windows and Mac. The integrations offer a vastly superior experience than messing around with VirtualBox and Vagrant by hand (been there, done that) to achieve running Docker on one's development machine.

[seabrookmx]

Rancher desktop is also a viable option and free. Many including my work moved to it after Docker's new licensing kicked in.

IMO the real magic of Docker was the Docker/OCI image format. It's a brilliant way to perform caching and distribute container images, and it's really what still differentiates the workflow from "full" VM's.

[jml78]

My main dev machine is Linux so I use Rancher Desktop but I also have a MacBook Pro m1 machine. Orbstack is so much better than rancher and docker desktop. I know they are a small company but hell if their product isn’t significantly more efficient and better.

[throwaway817472]

Completely agree. I moved from docker desktop to rancher after an update blew away my kubernetes cluster, and then from Rancher to Orbstack due to a number of bugs that were crashing the underlying VM. Orbstack has been rock solid (aside from one annoying networking issue), and it uses significantly less battery. They’ve done a fantastic job.

[jml78]

Only complaint is that my home network assigns IPv6 addresses and that fucks up external dns lookups for pods in Orbstack.

[fl0id]

Podman-Desktop is also great b/c it now has gpu support on macOS (for the Linux container)

[moogly]

I could not get LocalStack to run on Podman (w/ Docker emulation), on Fedora, so had to go back to Docker.

[kdrag0n]

Love to hear that :) sent you an email about the k8s IPv6 issue — should be able to get it fixed in OrbStack

[seabrookmx]

Why not use Docker CE if you're on Linux?

[tryauuum]

Related to image format, has anyone tried to use alternative image formats? There was a differnt format / filesystem for containers to leverage deduplication between different images (so the node won't need to fetch yet another copy of cuda / pytorch)

[fire_lake]

This is common in the Bazel community.

[magic_hamster]

Docker Desktop on Mac is a handicapped, underprivileged mess. Docker cli for Mac with Colima is still underprivileged, but at least you can skip the bs license and Docker's gui. On Windows you can at least use Docker on WSL which works great. Why use Docker Desktop is beyond me.

[skissane]

> Why use Docker Desktop is beyond me.

I lived through a failed attempt to migrate from Docker Desktop for Mac to an open source alternative (minikube+portainer, IIRC). A lot of test scripts developers relied on – to run parts of the integration test suite on their laptops for debugging – broke, because Docker Desktop for Mac went to a lot of effort to make macOS look like you were running Docker on Linux, whereas the open source replacement wasn't as seamless. Some of these test scripts contained Java code directly talking to the Docker daemon over its Unix domain socket, so need the same API implemented. Many other scripts made heavy use of the Docker CLI. After spending a lot of time on it, it was decided to just go back to Docker Desktop for Mac. The failed migration had resulted in highly paid engineers spending time pulling their hair out trying to get test scripts to work instead of actually fixing bugs and delivering new features.

Now, that was 2+ years ago now, and maybe the open source alternatives have caught up since, or maybe we picked the wrong one or made some other mistake. But I'm not rushing to try it again.

[jml78]

I would look at Orbstack. Yes it costs money but it is pretty great.

Your situation sounds very similar to the company I work for. Orbstack has been a drop in replacement except one issue. Any dev using IPv6 assignment on their home network has issues where pods try to hit external dns because it tries to use IPv6 and I don’t think the Orbstack k8s instance is dual stack.

There are hacks to get around it but if I could get Orbstack to address this issue, I couldn’t find one other issue.

Orbstack is crazy fast and way better than docker desktop overall

[karmajunkie]

i used it for a year or so then subscribed finally the other day. it really is well worth the money.

[notnmeyer]

i pay for orbstack. makes life better.

[nucleardog]

The reason Docker Desktop for Mac looks like you're running Docker on Linux is because... you are. It's running docker in a linux VM for you.

Similar issues in our environment, and I managed to swap everything over to Rancher Desktop fairly seamlessly as it does the exact same thing. It runs a Linux VM and if you select the "dockerd (moby)" container engine it runs a copy of docker inside of it. So you get a socket with the same docker API implemented... because it's running actual docker. docker compose and everything else work as expected.

The reason we switched is that Rancher Desktop, along with providing a convenient way to run docker, also includes a full k3s install in that same VM. So we can work on unifying some of our stack/configs on kubernetes rather than docker for local and kubernetes for everywhere else. It also opens up using upstream helm charts and things when a developer wants to deploy and try something locally.

It's also free. Open source and backed by SUSE, who also develops and maintains the k3s distribution among other stuff in this space.

[skissane]

> The reason Docker Desktop for Mac looks like you're running Docker on Linux is because... you are. It's running docker in a linux VM for you.

Yes, but that wasn't what I was talking about. Docker Desktop for Mac goes to a lot of trouble to hide the fact that there are two different virtual filesystems involved (Linux vs macOS) and two different networking stacks too. That means scripts which run on Docker for Linux and do stuff involving filesystem/network integration between the host and the container will often work without change on Docker Desktop for Mac. In my past experience, open source alternatives don't offer as seamless integration, they don't do as good a job of hiding the fact that there are two different virtual filesystems and networking stacks, so those kinds of scripts are less likely to work.

[nucleardog]

Don't know your use case that precisely so can't say if it does a "good job" versus just "a job", and it's been a while since I've used Docker Desktop or macos (though about half of our dev team is using Rancher Desktop on macos right now), but as far as I'm aware it's essentially identical.

FS: Rancher mounts your `/Users/$USER` folder in the VM that Docker is running in. It supports virtiofs on macos (not sure if it's used by default though). As far as I can tell, this replicates the default Docker Desktop setup.

Networking Container -> Host: Connecting to `host.docker.internal` works as expected. On the host I can listen on a port on my host (`nc -l -p 1234`) and connect from a container (`docker run -it --rm alpine nc host.docker.internal 1234`).

Networking Host -> Container: Exposed ports work as I would expect. I can run a container with an exposed port (`docker run -it --rm -p 1234:1234 alpine nc -l -p 1234`) and connect from my host (`telnet localhost 1234`). I can't connect directly onto the docker network bridge (though I'm not sure if that was ever supported on OSX?).

No skin in the game either way here, just with a bunch of people suggesting buying OrbStack (which is OSX only), figured I'd throw Rancher Desktop out as a potentially viable cross-platform alternative that's also free and OSS.

[pmarreck]

I've heard from someone who would know that you should be using Orbstack.

[skydhash]

I've just use a Debian arm virtual machine and be done with it (M1). If I'm going to run a VM regardless, may as well go with a full fledged one.

[phinnaeus]

I have a feeling we work at the same company. Well, maybe not, but we went through a strikingly similar experience around the same timeframe.

[tyingq]

A fair amount of the Docker Desktop use, on both mac and Windows, is driven by it's internal workarounds for brain-dead corporate VPNs.

[bhhaskin]

Docker for Mac does run on Linux. Just a striped down lightweight vm. It's why file Io is complete shit. It's a network share.

[mschuster91]

Use either the cached or delegated options for the volume [1] then even NodeJS becomes decently performant.

[1] https://tkacz.pro/docker-volumes-cached-vs-delegated/

[notpushkin]

Colima is the way to work with Docker on mac nowadays. I appreciate Docker Inc folks trying to get some money, but Docker Desktop is just not worth it.

[syndicatedjelly]

I've been using Docker CLI for Mac happily for years. What am I missing?

[acedTrex]

I just use colima on macos, its a far better experience. Much lighter weight

[dilyevsky]

Nah, they should have prioritized building some sort of PaaS solution like CloudRun, Render or Fly so they can sell that to enterprises for $$$. Instead they did half-baked docker swarm which never really worked reliably and then lost ground to k8s rapidly

[smt88]

Docker was a spinoff of an internal tool used to build exactly the type of PaaS you're describing. It was like a better Heroku and I loved it, but they shut it down when they focused on commercializing Docker itself.

[dilyevsky]

That was always weird to me they opted for freemium cli instead of enterprise paas play. Maybe it was just too early

[smt88]

My guess is the margins were really bad for a PaaS. It's expensive to build on top of other people's clouds.

[mst]

There's also the issue that building an effective enterprise sales organisation is a whole Thing and if you believe you can achieve profitability via a different path then the temptation to file the enterprise approach under "I have no idea how to do this and also I would rather not" is probably pretty strong.

(this is in no way a comment about what the right decision would have been, only musing on an additional reason the decision might have gone the way it did)

[rudasn]

dot cloud yes?

I was surprised when they shut that down too.

[mardifoufs]

That's what people usually say but they have tried to do just that a few years ago and it didn't really work. Docker inc has been doing great since they have shifted towards even more standardization in their container runtime, and focused on dev tooling. They became profitable when they focused on Docker desktop and docker hub instead of trying to build a clunky alternative to kubernetes or yet another cloud orchestration tool/platform.

[jen20]

Didn’t they buy at least one of these? It was garbage, and no one cared.

[dilyevsky]

dotCloud was actually what Docker came out of. No one cared because they didn’t prioritize it enough to make it good

[jen20]

Orchard was the one I was thinking of.

[djmips]

A lot of popular wealthy systems are 'easy' to re-implement. I thought the value was in Docker images? Or is that not how Docker is used? The only way I've used it is to be able to import someone's virtual build setup so I could build something from years ago.

[maxloh]

But Rancher Desktop does the same too (and is also open source).

[exceptione]

I think Docker is really lucky that devs still think container=Docker.

Podman is in many aspects superior, while still being able to function as a drop in.

[aryonoco]

Docker for Windows and Mac are both bloated pieces of software, outperformed by Rancher Desktop and Orbstack.

Docker's only real innovation was the OCI format, which it had to give away for it to become an industry standard, and now doesn't own.

[hu3]

Docker on Windows can use WSL2 engine for near native performance.

[airstrike]

Docker for Mac is just unusable. They're not really adding any value there.

[SadTrombone]

Have you tried out Orbstack?

[Bnjoroge]

+1 on orbstack. near-perfect drop in