And RE ecosystem: yeah I hope you're right (and think you are), I guess I'm just wondering what the odds are, and how feasible a switch back to Linux is without losing out on he niceness of mac-land.
This issue is regarding to starting docker.
Once that's up, there will be an issue with prebuilt images if they don't provide an ARM build. As more machines get out there, this should start to fix itself. For Python and JS, I don't foresee an issue with the projects that would prevent this. It's then an issue of who manages the project and if they want to do it or someone else forking it and providing arm builds. Not a big issue IMO. It's a fairly easy thing to do.
Anecdote, switching back to Linux, I've toyed with it recently and... it's not as frictionless (which sucks).
I run a bit of Linux infrastructure and I'm on servers all the time. But on laptops, I don't know why, I kept having issues. I went in knowing I won't have the integration and whatnot, but I still had some issues.
I ran it on extra, older, Apple hardware I have. Not sure if that might be why and newer or more compatible hardware would work better.
RE docker images: yeah thankfully the big hitters (alpine etc) will be fine so should be ok here. I have less confidence in supporting libs though.
RE linux: Argh, sounds like we're of similar backgrounds and this is my fear to be honest. I've heard good things about dell/lenovo hardware so I'd probs have to swing that way for the next refresh, but yeah i suspect it won't be as painful as I'd like.
Does docker run on macos (amd64) now? I thought it ran in a Linux vm? If they get the vm to run, all images should work exactly the same as before (modulus any hit for amd64-on-arm vs amd64-on-amd64)?
It uses a Linux environment for it.
The issue is anything compiled or baked into the image using x86, won’t be able to run without yet another translation layer.
Could end up being
Mac arm > qemu emulating amd64 cpu > docker vm (Linux amd64) > whatever application
Could be done, just adds another layer to translate things and overhead.
I think many people are trying to figure these questions for them out right now, as there is very little information yet on ARM support from many tools.