[chuckadams]

OrbStack is a very compelling alternative on macOS. The GUI launches instantly due to being a Swift app and not Electron. Container filesystems are visible in Finder. You can spin up full-blown VMs with it (only Linux ones though). Storage is managed dynamically, so you don't have to reserve or resize the virtual disk. Free for personal use, with zero nags or upsells.

[Shebanator]

Does anyone know if the company is still active. Haven't seen any updates for a while now. I like the product a lot, but products like this need security updates at the very least.

[chuckadams]

Last release was November 2025 which isn't that terribly long ago. https://docs.orbstack.dev/release-notes. They do look to have stopped blogging on orbstack.dev for more than a year now. They have a discord channel, but I'm not up for dealing with discord to check on it.

[pratio]

I can attest, Orbstack has been a gamechanger. Happily paying for the pro license.

[ch1234]

How are you deploying? I’m on dokploy so I’m not sure of compatibility

[chuckadams]

I use good old `docker compose`. It's 100% compatible, since it uses the same moby engine underneath. I've also run k3d on it, so I'm pretty sure it'll handle anything you throw at it.

[moltar]

Orb is definitely the winner. It’s fast. It does the job well. Never had an issue with it in two years.