After more than 5 years I couldn’t stand the disastrous performance of Docker4Mac anymore. Running a monolith that is about 10 years old is a real pain in the ass.
Docker is not the only one to blame here. Tight coupling between numerous systems does not help either. Nevertheless, I saw how slow my laptop was even on very small projects.
Moreover I used my machine very intensively and I felt it at the end of the race. It was time to give it a second wind.
Thanks @kipit for his precious help !
Hardware
- MacBookPro Mi 2015
- CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5287U CPU @ 2.90GHz
- RAM 2 X DDR3 Synchrone 1867 MHz
- Webcam Broadcom 720p FaceTime HD Camera
- WiFi Broadcom BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN
- SATA APPLE SSD SM0256
1/ Data backup
With a fresh new Operating System install, I plan to overwrite everything already on my disk so I take care to keep everything that seems important to me.
Personal and professional documents, but also configuration files. For example my .zshrc or gitconfig. file.
2/ Having OSX just in case
The installation of Ubuntu may fail or I may be disappointed with the new OS. I should be able to go back and reinstall Apple’s Operating System. The procedure is well explained.
3/ Download Ubuntu
Last LTS version is available on Ubuntu’s website. You could have download speed issue. If it’s the case you can try mirrors.
4/ Turning a USB flash drive into a bootable image
I used Balena Etcher which is a small tool very simple to use. You select the file (on your disk or from HTTP) then the USB flash drive.
I encountered a small problem during this stage. The tool told me that the disc I wanted to write to was busy. I had to use the following command to solve the problem:
diskutil umount /path/to/your/disk
5/ Install Ubuntu
I reboot the Mac while holding down the Option (or alt) key. The boot menu appears and I can select my USB flash drive containing Ubuntu.
The installation is very simple. The wizard guides us through the essential steps.
The Mac keyboard is recognized without any problem and is available in the list of available keyboards.
WiFi works very well too. I had no problems connecting to a wireless network with an excellent download speed (~100Mbits/s).
It is also possible to encrypt your disk.
6/ Docker & docker-compose
To install docker I didn’t have any particular worries. Everything is very well explained.
⚠️ Take care to read the paragraph at the end of the installation on the management of rights and groups. A group docker is added but there is nobody in it. This means that only the root user can execute docker commands. If you want to use docker without sudo, follow this documentation.
To install docker-compose I used apt:
sudo apt install docker-compose
7/ Python
To make the monolith working on my machine I need python (2!) and fabric.
To avoid conflicts between python versions I use pyenv. I suggest you to read whole README.
Once pyenv is installed, I can install whatever python version I want:
pyenv install 2.7.18
Then fabric:
$(pyenv root)/versions/2.7.18/bin/pip install fabric==1.14.0
I set an alias to make fabric easier to use:
#.zshrc
alias fab="$(pyenv root)/versions/2.7.18/bin/fab"
8/ Productivity
On Ubuntu Software, which is the equivalent of the App Store on Ubuntu, I was able to install Discord, Slack, Todoist, Miro and PHPStorm. I didn’t encounter any particular problem. The applications seem to work well. I didn’t find Notion but their webapp works very well on Firefox.
9/ AirPods
I was able to connect my AirPods with my machine with Bluetooth. However the sound quality is not as good. Moreover I have the impression that the distance allowed between the laptop and the airpods to continue to function is much less than on OSX.
10/ Webcam
Making the webcam work was ultimately the biggest worry. There are no official drivers available in Ubuntu. However someone has developed a driver on github. There is a summry of the procedure.