colima pretty much solves dev experience for docker and k8s on mac, esp. for apple silicons (m1/m2), where you can build multi-arch containers with ease.

Some interesting caveats:

* By default, system packages don't persist, as the default alpine distribution runs on tmpfs and doesn't have a overlay. This is a reasonable default, as it keeps the default VM storage small.

* If you want to have additional system packages, you can turn on a ubuntu overlay that supports additional systemd services just fine. Of course, storage would balloon to a few GBs from a few hundred MBs.

Edit: typos.

BTW, the result of docker build is immediately available to the k8s (k3s) cluster without any insecure registry and/or side loading/caching steps, thanks to the seamless buildkit integration.