[cdmckay]

After Docker Desktop randomly started consuming insane amounts of memory again we switched to Podman and it was literally as easy as installing it and pointing it at our docker-compose.yml.

Zero changes needed and now I don’t need to keep a daemon running.

Great software.

[chrisweekly]

I liked Orbstack better than colima which was better than Docker Desktop. Then I found https://smolmachines.com's smolvm microvms.

[trymas]

Fixed link: https://smolmachines.com/

[chrisweekly]

thanks!

[meszmate]

Since I came across orbstack that's the only one I use for docker on macOS

[zuzululu]

been using orbstack but this smol stuff is interesting

is this firecracker or total rewrite

[binsquare]

author of smol machines here, it has no relation to firecracker.

It runs ontop of the libkrun vmm forked with optimizations, which is the underlying lib powering podman as well.

open source, will contribute upstream when possible: https://github.com/smol-machines/libkrun

[glenjamin]

Upthread the implication seems to be that smolmachines would be in some way a replacement for orbstack to run docker containers

But it seems more like a completely different way to run isolated workloads?

[binsquare]

smol machines is a virtual machine, akin to firecracker but designed to run locally as well

It also has container-inages support built-in with crun so you can create a VM with a container running by default.

You can also just... run docker inside of it.

[zuzululu]

good stuff man i just installed it and its super fast im just not sure is this really secure to run untrusted code i can't find any white papers

[binsquare]

the underlying vmm is libkrun: https://github.com/libkrun/libkrun is battle tested and used for podman.

It provides kernel isolation for running untrusted code which is a security boundary that traditional containers can't guarantee.

I'm engaged with a third party security penetration company for their review, and will be happy to share it publicly when it is available.

[zuzululu]

thank you. definitely enjoying smol. this is a very nice alternative to docker, orbstack even firecracker

[LeBit]

Can smolmachines run devcontainers? K3d?

[binsquare]

yes to both, here's the example for running docker(indirectly, devcontainers) inside smolvm:

https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm/blob/main/examples/d...

[LeBit]

This is very cool. The example is thorough and well documented.

I am trying smolmachines this weekend.

Thanks.

[geek_at]

don't forget `alias docker='podman'` for muscle memory

[bmurphy1976]

It's been a couple months so I forget what problems I ran into, but Docker's AI bullshit pushed me over the edge and I tried switching to Podman. I ran into some compatibility issues. Alas I don't recall the details.

So I tried Rancher Desktop and other than I keep forgetting its name it just worked.

It's another simple option for those who need it.