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Ask HN: Best way to build and run containers on Mac M1

11 points by quintes ↗ HN
Hey all

I’ve just upgraded to Sonoma and have fallen out of touch with dev skills(I’m an Architect and been operating in the strategic sphere for a while but once was technical)

Wanting to build Llm and other things, so expecting ollama but also containers and databases. I see myself running a container or 3 so want a good workflow and set of tooling.

Are you running k3s, rancher desktop, or just Lima/Colima?

Also I realised I’d broken my brew install - I had it running in my primary Mac user account but created a standard user to reduce privileges and installed brew again and it broke (multi user issues I get it now!)

So I want to work as the standard user (adding account as sudoer) to seperate my user accounts. Is that what you do?

10 comments

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cpach
For running containers, I went with Lima+Debian+Docker Engine. It works quite well. I interact with Docker by simply connecting to the VM via SSH and the doing ‘docker run’ etc.
quintes
Thank you. So to ensure I understand - docker inside a Debian vm? Keeps the host clean I like it
speedgoose
If you want to use ollama, run it natively and not through a Linux VM for better performance.

Otherwise I use Colima, that can include k3s as an option.

quintes
Thanks for the tip on performance
tkiolp4
I use multipass to run Ubuntu VMs in my M1. Inside these VMs I run docker containers. I mainly use VMs to keep my Mac “clean” (I don’t wanna install, let’s say npm or go or whatever directly on my Mac).

Performance wise: I have several VMs running, and everything is fast.

quintes
Thank you I was hoping to hear if this was an option
solarkraft
I like Orbstack (orbstack.dev) as a light-weight Docker Desktop alternative. It also supports full VMs and k8s, I believe (but I never tried that).
quintes
Thanks I’ll need to look at their offering. Closed source right?