Running Docker on MacOS

Posted on:January 27, 2023 at 12:30 PM
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The “Problem”

Running docker on MacOS is NOT the same as running it natively on linux. This is because MacOS requires a Linux VM (or some other virtualizaation solution) for the docker CLI to talk to.

This isn’t my favorite thing, but as far as I can tell there’s just no way to get around that. The VM is required and causes some slowdown in comparison with a “bare-metal” runtime on Linux.

I’m not the first and definitely not the last to come to this conclusion.

My Solution

Solutions

I’ve used all of the following in some capacity over the years and here are my thoughts.

Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop is the standard way to install Docker on MacOS. It’s probably the most familiar and just works OOTB. It also gives you access to docker extensions as well as a nice GUI for reading and managing your containers.

Pros

Cons

Setup

Rancher Desktop

Rancher desktop is a similar to Docker desktop in the way that they both have a nice GUI for you to manage.

Rancher definitely doesn’t have the same feature-set (lack of extensions) but makes up for it in their K8s support.

Pros

Cons

Setup

Colima

Colima is a CLI only docker runtime. It still has a VM but gives you control over it’s specs. You can make multiple VMs with different specs and only run the ones you need when you need them.

Have a small web-server? Run it with 2 CPUs and 2gb of RAM and 10gb of storage. Training a LLM? Run it with 8 CPUs, 8gb of RAM, and 100GB of storage.

Those scenarios are 100% made-up, but do you get the idea.

I can scale the docker runtime for the project I’m currently working on.

Pros

Cons

Setup

Remote Docker Host

Why run a Linux VM if you can run it on Linux natively?

A while back I converted my old Linux desktop (year of the Linux desktop anyone?) to a “server” (by unplugging peripherals and put it by the router) that runs a number of docker services. A self-hosted “homelab” if you will.

Pros

Cons

Setup

I use the following zsh snippet to toggle between remote and local setups.

Warning! It’s definitely still a WIP and only works for the current shell session.

dockerRemoteConnect () {
  desired_context=${1:-remote}

  # Use these when lazydocker isn't working
  export DOCKER_HOST=ssh://username@remote-machine

  # Use one of the following when you've created a "remote" context and you aren't worried about lazydocker
  # export DOCKER_CONTEXT=$desired_context
  # docker context use $desired_context

  echo "Success!
  Now using docker context ($DOCKER_CONTEXT) on remote host ($DOCKER_HOST).
  Try 'docker ps' to see all running containers"
}

dockerRemoteDisconnect () {
  unset DOCKER_HOST
  unset DOCKER_CONTEXT

  desired_context=${1:-colima}
  docker context use $desired_context

  echo "Success!
  Now using docker context ($desired_context) on local host.
  Try 'docker ps' to see all running containers"
}

Other

I have not tried the solutions below, maybe one day.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are a number of other alternatives and different way I could’ve used the other solutions to solve my needs, but I like that…

Sure, I could disable menubars icons, determine runtime specs in Docker Desktop, and go from there, but I really enjoy the terminal only workflow.