Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Hyperbutler – Docker on Windows without WSL, 320 MB at idle
Run Docker on Windows with less RAM, less disk, and no WSL. hyperbutler runs dockerd in a small Hyper-V VM through the Host Compute Service and works with the stock docker CLI and Compose. Open source, Apache-2.0.
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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ohai! I've released Lightwhale 3, which is possibly the easiest way to self-host Docker containers. It's a free, immutable Linux system purpose-built to live-boot straight into a working Docker Engine, thereby shortcutting the need for installation, configuration, and maintenance. Its simple design makes it easy to learn, and its low memory footprint should make it especially attractive during these times of RAMageddon. If this has piqued your interest, do check it out, along with its easy-to-follow Getting Started guide. In any event, have a nice day! =)
Apr 2026 · lightwhale.asklandd.dk · its alternatives →
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Build and run tiny vms from Dockerfiles. Small and sleek. - ottomatica/slim
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Run KolibriOS, Linux or Windows 98 in your browser
2022 · copy.sh · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, we're excited to share Lumier (https://github.com/trycua/cua/tree/main/libs/lumier), an open-source tool for running macOS and Linux virtual machines in Docker containers on Apple Silicon Macs. When building virtualized environments for AI agents, we needed a reproducible way to package and distribute macOS VMs. Inspired by projects like dockur/windows (https://github.com/dockur/windows) that pioneered running Windows in Docker, we wanted to create something similar but optimized for Apple Silicon. The existing…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Build and run tiny vms from Dockerfiles. Small and sleek. - GitHub - ottomatica/slim at 2.x
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A Docker image for Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP4. - hectorm/docker-qemu-win2000
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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#!/usr/bin/env docker run. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
2024 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something similar needed to exist for large language models too. While not exactly the same as running linux containers, running LLMs shares quite a few of the same challenges. There are "base layers" (e.g. models like Llama 2), specific configuration to run correctly (parameters, temperature, context window sizes etc). There's…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Mike and Warren here! We’ve been building an open source local-dev-friendly mode for HyperDX (hyperdx.io). It's a single Docker container that lets you view logs, metrics, and traces for local development in a similar way you can use them for production (live tail, filter/correlate logs & spans, build charts, flamegraph, etc.) Basically, imagine you can run Datadog in a single container for local development. We does this by spinning up an OpenTelemetry collector, Clickhouse DB and HyperDX UI all in a single container - it only takes a few seconds to start and lets you start live…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
:aerial_tramway: Minimal linux container runtime. Contribute to flouthoc/vas-quod development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
I got tired of libvirt XML and Vagrant's Ruby/reload dance for single-host VM stacks, so I built a compose-style runtime directly on QEMU/KVM. What's there: GPU passthrough as a first-class primitive (VFIO, OVMF, per-instance EFI vars), healthchecks that gate depends_on over SSH, socket-multicast L2 between VMs with no root and no bridge config, cloud-init wired through the YAML, Dockerfile support for provisioning. What it's not: Kubernetes. No clustering, no live migration, no control plane. Single host. Prototype, but I'm running it on real hardware. Curious what breaks for…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13AD
Hello HN! We just launched a new feature we built at Depot that accelerates Docker image builds on your local machine in a team environment, and we wanted to share some of the details with you all. The launch blog post: https://depot.dev/blog/local-builds Depot is a hosted container build service - we run fully managed Intel and Arm remote build machines in AWS, with large instance sizes and SSD cache disks. The machines run BuildKit, the build engine that powers Docker, so generally anything you can `docker build`, you can also `depot build`. Most people use Depot in CI,…
2023 · its alternatives →
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Build your own wsl distro in docker, based on this example: https://gist.github.com/K0IN/485b6c9e442d10aa666c28672d621604 - K0IN/docker-to-wsl
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
If you’ve ever worked with web scraping or automation using Puppeteer or Playwright, you know that running Chrome can be tricky. While headless mode (Chrome with no display) often works, some page elements only render in headed mode, forcing you to run Chrome with a display. This usually means bloating your Dockerfile with complex dependencies like xvfb. Updating your server or Lambda container to handle this can increase costs and lead to dependency hell. The Solution: I’ve built a streamlined solution—a Docker image that runs Chrome with all its necessary dependencies and exposes a FastAPI…
2024 · hub.docker.com · its alternatives →
- 17DR
2019 · docker-run.com · its alternatives →
- 18IR
2015 · instadocker.com · its alternatives →
- 19HF
2017 · docs.hyper.sh · its alternatives →
- 20
Dockerized is like npx for unix tools: Run popular cli tools without installation. Example: dockerized npm init dockerized python2 somescript.py Run an older version of a tool: NODE_VERSION=15.0 dockerized node Use cases: - Maintaining multiple versions of an app - Installing without polluting host machine - Quickly run some commands you may not have installed Features: - intuitive use. Just the original command, but with 'dockerized' in front. - dockerized apps can access the current directory and read/modify files, just like native apps. - no need to know which docker image this…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Hello Everyone! We built SQLFlow as a lightweight stream processing engine. We leverage DuckDB as the stream processing engine, which gives SQLFlow the ability to process 10's of thousands of messages a second using ~250MiB of memory! DuckDB also supports a rich ecosystem of sinks and connectors! https://sql-flow.com/docs/category/tutorials/ https://github.com/turbolytics/sql-flow We were tired of running JVM's for simple stream processing, and also of bespoke one off stream processors I would love your feedback, criticisms and/or…
Dec 2025 · sql-flow.com · its alternatives →
- 22
High performance secure & portable Rust functions in Node.js
2020 · secondstate.io · its alternatives →
- 23
lambdock - Modern, hyper-hackable, Wayland-native desktop dock application (C and Guile Scheme + GTK4) w/ REPL
Aug 2026 · codeberg.org · its alternatives →
- 24
With the recent changes around Localstack pricing/licensing I've been hunting for alternatives. I decided that it might be a fun experiment to try rolling my own. SQS is a service I use heavily so I chose that as the first service to implement. I have more services planned and in development. A few things I think are cool: 4MB Docker Image Size Instant Startup AWS Sigv4 Authentication A little admin UI that can be helpful for development/troubleshooting Most of the SQS API implemented, the rest will soon follow :)
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles alternatives
- Docker in the browser using x86-to-WASM recompilation alternatives
- Lumier – Run macOS VMs in a Docker alternatives
- Slim 2: Create VM from Dockerfile, boots in seconds (+macOS M1/Hyper-V) alternatives
- Windows 2000 on Docker alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →