Comment by CodesInChaos
1 year ago
What's the advantage of running x86-64 Linux Docker containers over running ARM Linux Docker containers? Aren't most distributionss and packages available for both platforms?
1 year ago
What's the advantage of running x86-64 Linux Docker containers over running ARM Linux Docker containers? Aren't most distributionss and packages available for both platforms?
Microsoft SQL Server is only available as an x86-64 docker container binary. They actually had a native(?) arm64 docker container under the name "azure-sql-edge", which was (and still is) super useful as you can run it "natively" in an arm64 qemu linux for example, but alas that version was not long lived, as Microsoft decided to stop developing it again, which feels like a huge step backwards.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/azure-sql...
There's probably other closed-source linux software being distributed as amd64-only binaries (rosetta 2 for linux VMs isn't limited to docker containers).
The advantage is the fact that they exist. Not every Docker container is built for multiple platforms.
Lots and lots of Docker images are only linux/amd64 compatible. Without Rosetta 2 I wouldn't be able to do my job, especially in a team with a mix of Mac and Linux workstations and most images being build as amd64/linux only.
Some images are only available for amd64 still. Like oracle databases. Even if there is an arm64 of a recent version of the app, it may not exist for older versions that you want to test against.