Docker provider blog

src/content/blog/docker-providers.md

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+---
+title: "New DDEV Docker Providers for macOS"
+pubDate: 2023-11-29
+modifiedDate: 2023-11-29
+summary: "DDEV now supports OrbStack and Rancher Desktop as Docker Providers. And what is a Docker Provider anyway?"
+author: "Randy Fay"
+featureImage:
+  src: /img/blog/2023/11/docker-in-a-box.png
+  alt: Docker in a box
+  credit: "Image generated by OpenAI's DALL-E: Create an image of the Docker whale inside a ship container, depicted in a whimsical and colorful style."
+categories:
+  - DevOps
+---
+
+Exciting news! DDEV now has official support for two new Docker providers on macOS, [OrbStack](https://orbstack.dev) and [Rancher Desktop](https://rancherdesktop.io/). OrbStack is the new kid on the block, getting rave reviews for its performance and ease of use. Rancher Desktop has been around for a long time and wraps [Lima](https://github.com/lima-vm/lima), as Colima does.
+
+Each of DDEV’s officially supported Docker providers has support in automated testing, which means that every push to the default branch results in a 1-3 hour full test of DDEV’s test suite. New problems with the provider or DDEV are discovered rapidly.
+
+A credit before we get down to the differences: We want to thank Docker, Inc. for their amazing maintenance of an amazing open-source product, as well as all their commercial products. Each of the Docker providers below incorporates the open-source Docker/Moby project, presenting it in different ways. And Docker provides the [hub.docker.com](https://hub.docker.com) registry, where all of DDEV's Docker images are served from. And they provide DDEV membership in their [Docker Sponsored Open Source Program](https://www.docker.com/community/open-source/application/), which saves the DDEV Foundation money and also means that there are no rate limits on your usage of DDEV Docker images. Thank you, Docker!
+
+macOS Docker installation for each of these is [in the docs](https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/latest/users/install/docker-installation/#macos); the Docker providers and their differences are shown here:
+
+| Provider | Advantages                                      | Disadvantages                                       | Open Source? | Free? |
+| --- |-------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------| --- | --- |
+| OrbStack | Lightweight, great performance, well maintained |                                                     | No | No |
+| Colima | Many, many permutations of configuration        | There have been a variety of problems with upgrades | Yes | Yes |
+| Docker Desktop | Well-known                                      | Often buggy                                         | No | No |
+| Rancher Desktop |                                                 | New to DDEV                 | Yes | Yes |
+
+## What is a Docker Provider?
+
+DDEV depends on a Docker Provider, but what is it?
+
+Docker is the reason that DDEV can behave the same on every operating system, including Linux, WSL2, traditional Windows, and macOS (both Apple Silicon and Intel).
+
+All of the Docker Providers on every platform (except Linux) are actually wrappers on the open-source [Docker/Moby project](https://github.com/moby/moby), which is supported by [Docker, Inc](https://docker.com). Thank you! On Linux, the Docker setup runs natively, without any wrapper, which is why DDEV is so performant on Linux.
+
+## How can DDEV support all these providers?
+
+The idea of Docker is that everything happens inside a container, which you can think of as a little, separate computer. So the Docker images and containers used by DDEV are the same on every operating system, except that we build separate images for each processor architecture (arm64 - Apple Silicon, and amd64 - Intel). So mostly all the work is done inside the container, and the containers/images behave the same. And DDEV’s main code is written in Golang, which is compiled natively into a single binary on every platform. Of course that sounds simple, but it’s not all that simple. Building all those images has quite a history, and of course Docker providers that ought to behave the same everywhere don’t actually, so there are workarounds in many places.
+
+## What are the Docker Providers on other Operating Systems?
+
+| OS | Provider | Open Source? | Free? | Comments                                                                           |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
+| Traditional Windows | Docker Desktop | no | no | Can be buggy, can be slow, but pretty usable with mutagen                          |
+| Windows WSL2 | docker-ce | yes | yes | Standard Linux Docker, performant, free, open source, well-maintained              |
+| Windows WSL2 | Docker Desktop | no | no | Can be buggy                                                                       |
+| Linux | docker-ce | yes | yes | Standard open-source Docker, well-maintained                                       |
+| Linux | Docker Desktop for Linux (DO NOT USE) | no | no | Non-functional for containers like DDEV that don’t use root user, poor performance |
+
+## What are DDEV Users Choosing Right Now?
+
+Traditional Windows users have only the Docker Desktop option, and nearly everyone on Linux uses docker-ce, but here are the macOS and WSL2 breakdowns:
+
+![Macos Docker Platform Usage](/img/blog/2023/11/macOS_Docker_Platform.png)
+
+![WSL2_Docker_Platform Usage](/img/blog/2023/11/WSL2_Docker_Platform.png)