I’ve been using colima for cli docker on my arm mac. It’s pretty straightfirward using homebrew.

Colima is great. However, in the upcoming macOS 26 Tahoe, and mostly in macOS 15 Sequoia, Apple is beginning to provide a first-party solution:

https://github.com/apple/container

I've been experimenting with it in macOS 15, and I was able to replace Colima entirely for my purposes. Running container images right off of Docker Hub, without Docker / Podman / etc.

(And yes, it is using a small Linux VM run under Apple's HyperKit.)

I ran into various issues I think, but my main objective was running a full k3s cluster this way, reckon this is achievable with full networking support now? Also if I already had colima setup, does new apple container provide any benefits beyond just being made by apple?

Try Orb docker. It is fast. It ha a Kubernetes cluster feature.

This thread is amazing - thank you all.

I’m surprised I didn’t stumble into any of these options, I searched and didn’t find.

It might not be Ubuntu but Asahi Linux runs Fedora pretty well on M2 Pro and older Apple Silicon Mac Minis: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support