{"slug": "colima", "name": "Colima", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "Command-line tool that runs Docker and other container runtimes in a Linux VM on macOS.", "recommenders": 8, "commenters": 12, "warners": 1, "score": 6.873, "rising": -1.29, "first": "2025-12-02", "latest": "2026-08-30", "why": "Recommended as an open-source, command-line replacement for Docker Desktop on macOS that installs easily via Homebrew and runs better with Apple's virtualization framework than with QEMU.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 8, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Docker Desktop alternative", "Open source"], "caveat": "No GUI", "short_quote": "With colima, it's all open source and easy to install/upgrade via homebrew.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/abiosoft/colima", "official_url": "https://github.com/abiosoft/colima", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Colima"], "verdict": [{"text": "Recommended as an open-source, command-line replacement for Docker Desktop on macOS", "cites": [{"id": 761703746, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "so I don't need docker desktop", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers locally", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}, {"id": 768467184, "item_id": 48029199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029199", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-05-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With colima, it's all open source and easy to install/upgrade via homebrew.", "excerpt": "Since people are mentioning alternatives, worth calling out colima if maybe you don't want to jump onto Red Hat's podman or Suse's Rancher. Both are open source but there are some corporate entities behind them with their own agendas that you might want to consider. My reasoning is simply that I don't really want to swap out one overly complicated thing for another. I'm sure Podman is fine and amazing. But I'm just n", "context": "not in the IBM/Red Hat ecosystem", "use_case": "running containers on laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs"}]}, {"text": " that installs easily via Homebrew and runs better with Apple's virtualization framework than with QEMU.", "cites": [{"id": 768467184, "item_id": 48029199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029199", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-05-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With colima, it's all open source and easy to install/upgrade via homebrew.", "excerpt": "Since people are mentioning alternatives, worth calling out colima if maybe you don't want to jump onto Red Hat's podman or Suse's Rancher. Both are open source but there are some corporate entities behind them with their own agendas that you might want to consider. My reasoning is simply that I don't really want to swap out one overly complicated thing for another. I'm sure Podman is fine and amazing. But I'm just n", "context": "not in the IBM/Red Hat ecosystem", "use_case": "running containers on laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 775659856, "item_id": 48478741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478741", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah I was gonna say I use Colima with Apple\u2019s virtualization framework (it\u2019s not the default for some reason but it\u2019s a single command line flag), and found it works better than QEMU (better performance and resolved some bugs I was running into with the Supabase docker stack)", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}]}, {"text": " Caveats include no GUI, a default $HOME mount that had to be turned off for isolation, and the faster virtualization backend not being the default", "cites": [{"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 775575776, "item_id": 48473486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473486", "by": "kenanfyi", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that.", "excerpt": "I see. Why this interests me is the similar stuff I have been reading lately. All these supply chain attacks regarding npm, Tanstack etc. Therefore I wanted to create a totally isolated sandbox and while considering options I have seen they all by default mount the $HOME. I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that. But yeah, I guess my use case is not the main use of such tools or their purpose in general. Tha", "context": "", "use_case": "isolated sandbox", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 775659856, "item_id": 48478741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478741", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah I was gonna say I use Colima with Apple\u2019s virtualization framework (it\u2019s not the default for some reason but it\u2019s a single command line flag), and found it works better than QEMU (better performance and resolved some bugs I was running into with the Supabase docker stack)", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}]}, {"text": "; one commenter calls Apple's container framework an improvement over it.", "cites": [{"id": 791027891, "item_id": 49439243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439243", "by": "8xeh", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Apple's container framework is a welcome improvement over colima for running most container workloads.", "excerpt": "My Mac mini m1 is a fantastic home server. Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75\u00a2/month). I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power ", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Docker Desktop alternative", "summary": "Commenters use it so they no longer need Docker Desktop on macOS.", "quotes": [{"id": 761703746, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "so I don't need docker desktop", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers locally", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}]}, {"label": "Open source", "summary": "It is fully open source and easy to install and upgrade via Homebrew.", "quotes": [{"id": 768467184, "item_id": 48029199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029199", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-05-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With colima, it's all open source and easy to install/upgrade via homebrew.", "excerpt": "Since people are mentioning alternatives, worth calling out colima if maybe you don't want to jump onto Red Hat's podman or Suse's Rancher. Both are open source but there are some corporate entities behind them with their own agendas that you might want to consider. My reasoning is simply that I don't really want to swap out one overly complicated thing for another. I'm sure Podman is fine and amazing. But I'm just n", "context": "not in the IBM/Red Hat ecosystem", "use_case": "running containers on laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs"}, {"id": 790955512, "item_id": 49434719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434719", "by": "jlokier", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima)", "excerpt": "You can't run Linux directly on these. Asahi Linux supports up to M2 only. Linux runs very well in a VM on macOS. There are many good options for this, some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima), some proprietary (VMware Fusion, Parallels). But Linux in a VM doesn't get access to the real GPU, so model performance is limited. Those running on the CPU perform well, and those needing the GPU don't. However, ma", "context": "", "use_case": "running Linux VMs on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}]}, {"label": "Reliability", "summary": "Mac users report it works well, with one reporting zero issues.", "quotes": [{"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}]}, {"label": "Performance", "summary": "With Apple's virtualization framework it gives a fast virtiofs VM and performs better than QEMU.", "quotes": [{"id": 775659856, "item_id": 48478741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478741", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah I was gonna say I use Colima with Apple\u2019s virtualization framework (it\u2019s not the default for some reason but it\u2019s a single command line flag), and found it works better than QEMU (better performance and resolved some bugs I was running into with the Supabase docker stack)", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}]}, {"label": "Linux VMs", "summary": "It is suggested for running Linux and Docker containers in a VM, including as a sandbox.", "quotes": [{"id": 774666265, "item_id": 48416641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416641", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Your best bet is to run a VM (colima) with Docker container (Ubuntu)", "excerpt": "1) OpenCode. Despite its many shortcomings and constant bugs, it's good enough for basic work. Use the web interface so you can switch around sessions easily, keep it running in the background (on a VPS for example). Add to it MCP servers for other systems you use, like AWS Docs MCP, Atlassian MCP, Linear MCP, SearXNG MCP, Playwright MCP, etc, which basically multiplies the AI's usefulness. Tune config to block all u", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing AI agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 790955512, "item_id": 49434719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434719", "by": "jlokier", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima)", "excerpt": "You can't run Linux directly on these. Asahi Linux supports up to M2 only. Linux runs very well in a VM on macOS. There are many good options for this, some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima), some proprietary (VMware Fusion, Parallels). But Linux in a VM doesn't get access to the real GPU, so model performance is limited. Those running on the CPU perform well, and those needing the GPU don't. However, ma", "context": "", "use_case": "running Linux VMs on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 760851282, "item_id": 47553205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553205", "by": "te_chris", "date": "2026-03-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're on linux and have kvm, there's Lima and Colima too.", "excerpt": "This looks nice, but on mac you can virtualise really easily into microvms now with https://github.com/apple/container. I've built my own cli that runs the agent + docker compose (for the app stack) inside container for dev and it's working great. I love --dangerously-skip-permissions. There's 0 benefit to us whitelisting the agent while it's in flight. Anthropic's new auto mode looks like an untrustworthy solution i", "context": "", "use_case": "container runtime", "switched_from": "", "story": "Don't YOLO your file system"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "No GUI", "summary": "It is command-line only, suited to users who don't need a UI.", "quotes": [{"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}]}, {"label": "Default $HOME mount", "summary": "It mounts $HOME by default, which one user had to disable to build an isolated sandbox.", "quotes": [{"id": 775575776, "item_id": 48473486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473486", "by": "kenanfyi", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that.", "excerpt": "I see. Why this interests me is the similar stuff I have been reading lately. All these supply chain attacks regarding npm, Tanstack etc. Therefore I wanted to create a totally isolated sandbox and while considering options I have seen they all by default mount the $HOME. I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that. But yeah, I guess my use case is not the main use of such tools or their purpose in general. Tha", "context": "", "use_case": "isolated sandbox", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}]}, {"label": "Non-default backend", "summary": "Apple's virtualization framework, which worked better than QEMU for one user, must be enabled with a flag.", "quotes": [{"id": 775659856, "item_id": 48478741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478741", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah I was gonna say I use Colima with Apple\u2019s virtualization framework (it\u2019s not the default for some reason but it\u2019s a single command line flag), and found it works better than QEMU (better performance and resolved some bugs I was running into with the Supabase docker stack)", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}]}, {"label": "Apple container", "summary": "One commenter calls Apple's container framework an improvement over Colima for most workloads.", "quotes": [{"id": 791027891, "item_id": 49439243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439243", "by": "8xeh", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Apple's container framework is a welcome improvement over colima for running most container workloads.", "excerpt": "My Mac mini m1 is a fantastic home server. Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75\u00a2/month). I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power ", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra"}]}, {"label": "Unclear positioning", "summary": "One commenter was unsure when to choose it over Docker or newer container tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 775547200, "item_id": 48471700, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471700", "by": "golem14", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "or use something like colima, which this seems to be close to", "excerpt": "I belong to a rare breed of very opportunistic hobby-developers that like to use MacOS but also like to use linux machines or BSDs (rpi etc) sometimes. I can create docker-images with docker compose, or use something like colima, which this seems to be close to (that should have some advantages over docker, although my hope of circumventing W^X page protection did not pan out). I was perplexed that the repository doe", "context": "hobby developer using macOS, Linux and BSDs", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}]}], "who": [{"by": "jillesvangurp", "context": "not in the IBM/Red Hat ecosystem", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029199", "date": "2026-05-05"}, {"by": "y0ssar1an", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "date": "2026-02-25"}, {"by": "trcarney", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "date": "2025-12-02"}], "tags": ["for macOS users", "Docker Desktop alternative", "CLI-only", "for Linux with KVM", "for sandboxing"], "use_cases": ["running containers on macos", "running docker", "running containers on mac", "running linux vms on macos", "isolated sandbox", "sandboxing ai agents"], "compared": [{"slug": "docker-desktop", "name": "Docker Desktop", "co": 2, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "docker", "name": "Docker", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "orbstack", "name": "OrbStack", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "lima", "name": "Lima", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "qemu", "name": "QEMU", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "podman", "name": "Podman", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "mise", "name": "mise", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469658", "title": "macOS Container Machines", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49499854", "title": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433316", "title": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433292", "title": "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413629", "title": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986331", "title": "Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2, "compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 792041728, "item_id": 49502608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49502608", "by": "lucideer", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use dockerd via colima", "excerpt": "I don't think this is as widely known as you believe: I use dockerd via colima so it's not a limitation I've encountered - if I had, I likely would've switched to podman wholesale instead of compromising my system. Either way though, I would hope it's self-evident to most that taking glaring security holes in a single app (docker) & transforming them into glaring security holes in an entire OS is generally not desira", "context": "", "use_case": "running Docker", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 791027891, "item_id": 49439243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439243", "by": "8xeh", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Apple's container framework is a welcome improvement over colima for running most container workloads.", "excerpt": "My Mac mini m1 is a fantastic home server. Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75\u00a2/month). I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power ", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 790955512, "item_id": 49434719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434719", "by": "jlokier", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima)", "excerpt": "You can't run Linux directly on these. Asahi Linux supports up to M2 only. Linux runs very well in a VM on macOS. There are many good options for this, some free and open source (QEMU, UTM, Lima, Colima), some proprietary (VMware Fusion, Parallels). But Linux in a VM doesn't get access to the real GPU, so model performance is limited. Those running on the CPU perform well, and those needing the GPU don't. However, ma", "context": "", "use_case": "running Linux VMs on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 775659856, "item_id": 48478741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48478741", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah I was gonna say I use Colima with Apple\u2019s virtualization framework (it\u2019s not the default for some reason but it\u2019s a single command line flag), and found it works better than QEMU (better performance and resolved some bugs I was running into with the Supabase docker stack)", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 775575776, "item_id": 48473486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473486", "by": "kenanfyi", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that.", "excerpt": "I see. Why this interests me is the similar stuff I have been reading lately. All these supply chain attacks regarding npm, Tanstack etc. Therefore I wanted to create a totally isolated sandbox and while considering options I have seen they all by default mount the $HOME. I needed to explicitly tell colima to not do that. But yeah, I guess my use case is not the main use of such tools or their purpose in general. Tha", "context": "", "use_case": "isolated sandbox", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 775547200, "item_id": 48471700, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471700", "by": "golem14", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "or use something like colima, which this seems to be close to", "excerpt": "I belong to a rare breed of very opportunistic hobby-developers that like to use MacOS but also like to use linux machines or BSDs (rpi etc) sometimes. I can create docker-images with docker compose, or use something like colima, which this seems to be close to (that should have some advantages over docker, although my hope of circumventing W^X page protection did not pan out). I was perplexed that the repository doe", "context": "hobby developer using macOS, Linux and BSDs", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS Container Machines"}, {"id": 774666265, "item_id": 48416641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416641", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Your best bet is to run a VM (colima) with Docker container (Ubuntu)", "excerpt": "1) OpenCode. Despite its many shortcomings and constant bugs, it's good enough for basic work. Use the web interface so you can switch around sessions easily, keep it running in the background (on a VPS for example). Add to it MCP servers for other systems you use, like AWS Docs MCP, Atlassian MCP, Linear MCP, SearXNG MCP, Playwright MCP, etc, which basically multiplies the AI's usefulness. Tune config to block all u", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing AI agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 768467184, "item_id": 48029199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029199", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-05-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With colima, it's all open source and easy to install/upgrade via homebrew.", "excerpt": "Since people are mentioning alternatives, worth calling out colima if maybe you don't want to jump onto Red Hat's podman or Suse's Rancher. Both are open source but there are some corporate entities behind them with their own agendas that you might want to consider. My reasoning is simply that I don't really want to swap out one overly complicated thing for another. I'm sure Podman is fine and amazing. But I'm just n", "context": "not in the IBM/Red Hat ecosystem", "use_case": "running containers on laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs"}, {"id": 761703746, "item_id": 47606484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47606484", "by": "Zizizizz", "date": "2026-04-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "so I don't need docker desktop", "excerpt": "https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when p", "context": "", "use_case": "running containers locally", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?"}, {"id": 760851282, "item_id": 47553205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553205", "by": "te_chris", "date": "2026-03-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're on linux and have kvm, there's Lima and Colima too.", "excerpt": "This looks nice, but on mac you can virtualise really easily into microvms now with https://github.com/apple/container. I've built my own cli that runs the agent + docker compose (for the app stack) inside container for dev and it's working great. I love --dangerously-skip-permissions. There's 0 benefit to us whitelisting the agent while it's in flight. Anthropic's new auto mode looks like an untrustworthy solution i", "context": "", "use_case": "container runtime", "switched_from": "", "story": "Don't YOLO your file system"}, {"id": 754453792, "item_id": 47153362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153362", "by": "y0ssar1an", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i have had zero issues with colima.", "excerpt": "The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM. brew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST=\"$HOME/.colima/docker.sock\" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.json \"cliPluginsExtraDirs\": [\"/opt/homebrew/li", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "Docker on macOS", "switched_from": "Docker Desktop", "story": "Red Hat takes on Docker Desktop with its enterprise Podman Desktop build"}, {"id": 738025536, "item_id": 46126596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126596", "by": "trcarney", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "excerpt": "if you don't need the UI, colima works pretty well for mac", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "running containers on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What alternatives to Docker Desktop are people using?"}]}