I Switched from Docker Desktop to OrbStack

I recently tried to run Coop, ROOST’s open source content moderation platform locally because I wanted to do open source contribution.

The problem was that Coop needs Postgres, ClickHouse and Redis running in a containers and my M1 MacBook only has 8GB of RAM and with Firefox, Zen, terminal and a Node server already running, Docker Desktop was making things a bit painful.

So I ended up trying OrbStack and was honestly surprised by how much lighter it felt.

OrbStack is basically an alternative to Docker Desktop for Mac. It still uses the normal docker commands and Docker Compose so I didnt have to change anything in Coop’s setup.

One of the things I actually learned was that containers need a Linux kernel, and macOS doesn’t have one. So Docker on a Mac always runs a small hidden Linux virtual machine and puts your containers inside it. Docker Desktop and OrbStack are both doing that, OrbStack’s VM is just much lighter.

For me, the main difference was memory. Coop’s database containers were using around 450MB while idle which made a pretty big difference on an 8GB machine.

There is one annoying thing to know about though orbStack uses its own docker context so if your containers randomly disappear, its worth checking:

docker context ls
docker context use orbstack

Nothing groundbreaking but I was pretty happy to find something that made running Coop locally actually manageable on my laptop.

TIL: If you are on a Mac with limited RAM and need to run Docker locally, OrbStack is definitely worth trying.