I'm using Docker on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air with 16 GB of memory, and the benchmarks I've seen show OrbStack using noticeably fewer resources than Docker Desktop. I'd prefer to stick with Docker Desktop because it comes from the Docker team and feels like the safer, more official choice, but I'm wondering whether Docker is actively working on improving its performance and memory usage. Is there a realistic chance it will become comparable to OrbStack, or should I consider alternative setups such as a Linux virtual machine with the standard Docker Engine?
4 Answers
Another option is to run a proper Linux virtual machine with the standard Docker Engine and use a lightweight management interface such as Dockhand or Arcane. That can avoid some of the overhead of Docker Desktop, although it adds the responsibility of managing the VM yourself.
There’s no guarantee that Docker Desktop will ever match OrbStack’s efficiency. Applications usually gain features and complexity over time rather than becoming dramatically smaller. Since both tools use Docker-compatible APIs, alternative graphical front ends can provide a lighter experience without changing the underlying container workflow.
Docker is actively working on performance improvements. The team has released an early beta of a new virtualization layer for macOS, which is intended to reduce overhead. It’s only an initial step, so it may take time before the results are comparable across different workloads.
Projects such as Apple’s containers tooling may eventually become a more natural container runtime on macOS. It’s promising, but it isn’t necessarily a drop-in replacement for Docker Desktop yet, so I’d treat it as something to watch rather than an immediate migration path.
I’d be interested in the technical details too, especially whether the new virtualization layer is based on libkrun or a similar project.