Ask HN: ARM Macs – Will/How Docker, Vagrant, Virtual Box with x86 Linux Work?

8 points by yumraj 5y ago ↗ HN

Was looking into Vagrant/Docker, and VS Code remote containers last yesterday while trying to setup cleaner env for some stuff when I couldn't answer the question as to how all of this will work in the ARM MacOS world?

Even if Docker/Vagrant... are ported, what about Virtual Box and will we be limited to ARM Linux images? If yes, would that be the end of Macs as a dev machine. If we are able to run x86 images, what sort of a performance penalty, due to the difference in architecture?

In a way this may also have a bearing on my next Macbook Pro upgrade, and to ARM or not to ARM.

Are my concerns real or unjustified?

2 comments

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kevinherron 5y ago ↗

Your concerns are real. I suspect x86 VMs will end up being emulated (once supported by Parallels, VMware, etc...) and suffer a performance hit.

I rely on some Windows x86 software for work so I'm waiting to see how all of this plays out. Luckily I have a 16" MBP right now so I've got time to wait and see.

throwaway851 5y ago ↗

For what it's worth, when the original Rosetta (PowerPC to Intel) was released, it wasn't faster to run emulated/translated PowerPC apps on the first generation Intel Mac, but a few Intel Mac generations later, it was. There was a reason why Apple decided to migrate off of PowerPC. :-)

See also this post about Rosetta performance from someone who ported Google Earth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686924

For Linux and Docker, you might want to check out:

Transparently running binaries from any architecture in Linux with QEMU and binfmt_misc

https://ownyourbits.com/2018/06/13/transparently-running-bin...

Docker Engine on Intel Linux runs Arm Containers

https://blog.hypriot.com/post/docker-intel-runs-arm-containe...

While it describes running ARM linux binaries on an Intel machine, it should be possible to do the opposite.