The one thing that would really get me excited would be native Container support. Is it too much to ask to have Docker running without my MacBook transforming into a 747?

Unfortunately, containers are kernel dependent and XNU servers aren’t common enough.

Containers are just processes with enhanced isolation from the kernel.

Windows has native kernel container support, but windows servers are common enough, especially in enterprise corporations.

Windows containers can’t run on Linux and vice versa.

9dev

Yeah, I know. But I would have hoped that Apple recognises how many developers are struggling with Docker for Mac and has pockets deep enough, and engineering competence available, to alleviate that pain a little.

It would be way easier to build a Mach/Linux Kernel bridge in the style of WSL2 than it was for Windows, for example.

kuhsaft

WSL2 is no longer using the NT kernel. It’s a full blown VM now that uses Plan 9 9p for file system interop.

The new Docker for Windows uses an additional WSL2 distro instance, so it’s not very different from Docker for Mac.

Windows Docker -> Mac Docker

WSL2/Hyper-V -> Hypervisor.framework/Virtualization.framework

9p -> gRPC-fuse/virtiofs

They’re the same setup really.

If you want something like WSL2, I would recommend Lima (https://github.com/lima-vm/lima).

Edit: Well, they’re not completely the same. WSL2 is using virtualization, but the WSL instances are actually using a shared kernel packaged with WSL (https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/blob/mattw-wsl2-explain...). So it’s a bit more optimized than standard MacOS Virtualization due to some optimizations.