Mac OS Apple's "container" tool - WSL-style homebrew killer?

[vishalrao]

See https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/06/apple-linux-container-tool-mac-developers

In all the hype about Liquid Glass etc, this new tool being lost in the noise...

Has anyone tried this yet by chance?

How does it work for running, say, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS image in x86_64 platform?

Any feedback?

 

[ishanjain28]

This is just a wrapper around the Virtualization framework in macos. I don't believe there is anything new if you are already using docker desktop

 

[vishalrao]

I think it's a WSL-style (lightweight VMs running the containers, yes seems counter-intuitive) implementation - should be more efficient than docker/podman etc...

Article and github etc say it uses an optimised VM with sub-second startup times... kind of like WSL uses Hyper-V mode in Win11 IINM?

 

[ishanjain28]

Docker desktop on macos has multiple operating modes. You can leverage virtualization framework + Rosetta to run very light weight linux instances if needed, or do qemu virtualization(similar to wine) for running linux containers. There is also a third newer option called VMM but I have not tested it yet.

 

[calssifed user]

This may not have GPU pass through though , if you are running any intensive GPU workload. For light weight desktop it will work.

 

[vishalrao]

Yeah this is freshly baked nascent tool - long way to go before reaching WSL2 feature-set I guess - but promising as a WSL-like environment for linux app development?

 

[Midhun]

So far this is being presented as an alternative to existing container solutions like orbstack and colima. But the underlying tech (https://github.com/apple/containerization) is very similar to WSL2.