Of course Orbstack is fast, it uses LXD, not actual VMs. In fact, Orbstack on Mac is what made me switch to LXD (Incus) on Linux to replace Docker and virt-manager.

Wrong, Orbstack does use VMs.

https://docs.orbstack.dev/architecture

> OrbStack uses a lightweight Linux virtual machine with a shared kernel to minimize overhead and save resources, similar to WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

No. It uses a VM to virtualize a Linux kernel running LXD containers. Those are not virtual machines.

https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/461#issuecomment...

The VM you just referred to is a virtual machine, that’s what VM stands for.

I think you forgot how this thread got started:

> If you’re on macOS, then Orbstack is a nice alternative to Docker Desktop

We’re talking about running OCI (“Docker compatible”) images. The page you just linked to makes it apparent that you are talking about something orthogonal: OrbStack’s “machines” feature (https://docs.orbstack.dev/machines/).

The original topic is that OrbStack’s support for Docker containers is fast (implied: faster than Docker for Desktop), which cannot be explained by the lack of a VM, as both use a Linux VM to run one or more Docker containers.

lxd supports containers and virtual machines