Containers

For Windows and macOS users, Docker Desktop has been the main way to use Docker containers for many years. While it remains a viable and usable option for hobbyists and small development teams, recent pricing changes for larger user bases sent people looking for alternatives. I am not looking to replace Docker Desktop myself, but I was interested in trying the alternatives and seeing how they compared.

I've been happily using [Parallels Desktop][1] for my Windows and Linux virtual machine needs for about the past three years. It's performant, supports a reasonable variety of guest operating systems, and, with some tweaks, can also run headless developer machines and Kubernetes clusters.

Changes in recent versions of macOS have made running macOS and Linux virtual machines far easier and more performant. Primarily used for testing, a plethora of new applications that take advantage of these features emerged, so when Mac Stadium released a free desktop version of their long-running Okra range of virtualisation tools, one feature in particular stood out to me as something different and potentially useful.