A stable container runtime for MacOS

I have been more or less an early adopter of Docker. Therefore, it was always difficult for me to switch to an alternative container runtime because I somehow felt comfortable with Docker and wanted to remain loyal to the market leader. However, over the years, several issues kept arising, which recently even resulted in frequent crashes of the entire runtime. There was hardly a week that went by without me having to factory reset Docker for Desktop.

At this point, I came across Orbstack through one of my tech news channels. Do you know that feeling? Some landing pages or product pages just meet you exactly where you are. This was one of those cases. I had problems, and Orbstack had a promise for me.

And what can I say? Orbstack does what it promises and works without any issues so far, doing exactly what I needed. It was installed and started within seconds. The UI looks much tidier and responds significantly faster than the Docker for Desktop interface due to its native implementation for macOS. Here is a screenshot of the Orbstack interface:

And here for comparison is the Docker for Desktop interface:

A small difference or drawback for me is that the Kubernetes containers are not hidden when running docker ps but are displayed. In Docker for Desktop, it is possible to hide them with a setting.

All in all, it is simply an advantage for me that the runtime is hardly noticeable - easy to set up and runs stable.