It's worse than that if you're a business. If you simply want to use Docker Desktop on Mac, you're required to get Docker Team ($15/user/mo for <100 users) or Docker Business ($24/user/mo for 100+ users). Even if you want literally zero of the cloud features you're required to pay this amount.
I highly recommend OrbStack (https://orbstack.dev/) instead. It's $8/user/mo for businesses and you get something that is faster, easier on your battery, and more simple to use. We switched hundreds of engineers over to it at Instacart and it was seamless.
So I can run orbstack and then still use "docker run ..." etc commands like usual?
I'm pretty happy with docker desktop generally, but looks like it stopped updating for the version of osx I'm using on my 2019 intel mbpro, so I'll definitely consider alternatives for it there ...
Yes. The same docker commands, including docker-compose, all still work.
It just sets a new "docker context" that points to OrbStack's socket file instead. You can instantly switch back to Docker Desktop with a simple `docker context use desktop-linux` command. So it's nearly zero cost to just try it out.
$ docker context ls
NAME DESCRIPTION DOCKER ENDPOINT
default Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration unix:///var/run/docker.sock
orbstack * OrbStack unix:///Users/mdeeks/.orbstack/run/docker.sock
OrbStack had the most noticeable difference for our users who were still on Intel Macbooks. It made mine stop spinning up fans randomly.
For a technology offering I once thought had a shot at being the future of packaging and deployments, Docker (the company) sure seems set on being the betamax of container technology. We’ve reviewed this at both companies I’ve worked for since their original license changes and both times worked out it was overall better for us to drop Docker all together. In each case a different tech stack won, but for both having an easy, open container standard would have been the better outcome. Keyword being easy, we had some false starts with a few of the ‘replace docker desktop with us’ products that just never worked as well, and so we just walked away from containers as the package and deploy portion of our apps.
12 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 42.0 ms ] threadIt's almost twice as expensive, but it's also "simplified", so who's to say if it's bad or not.
I highly recommend OrbStack (https://orbstack.dev/) instead. It's $8/user/mo for businesses and you get something that is faster, easier on your battery, and more simple to use. We switched hundreds of engineers over to it at Instacart and it was seamless.
I'm pretty happy with docker desktop generally, but looks like it stopped updating for the version of osx I'm using on my 2019 intel mbpro, so I'll definitely consider alternatives for it there ...
Thanks for sharing !
It just sets a new "docker context" that points to OrbStack's socket file instead. You can instantly switch back to Docker Desktop with a simple `docker context use desktop-linux` command. So it's nearly zero cost to just try it out.
OrbStack had the most noticeable difference for our users who were still on Intel Macbooks. It made mine stop spinning up fans randomly.https://rancherdesktop.io/
It also provides the Docker CLI and nearly the same features as Docker Desktop. In fact, some Docker Desktop extensions can run on Rancher Desktop.
Do note Rancher Desktop is more oriented for Kubernetes, so most of the GUI is for managing the Kubernetes cluster rather than individual containers.