TLDR; if you develop in devcontainers and can choose between a MacBook Pro with a Linux VM and a x86_64 Linux desktop, the Linux desktop can be multiple times faster.
Modern computers are fast. The only place I have really noticed a difference in performance is running tests. However, I frequently run my projects’ test suites and reducing the time it takes improves my development experience. I was developing with devcontainers in Colima on macOS. Previously, I was developing directly on macOS. The ease of reproducing a development environment and the increased security against supply chain attacks or coding agents run amok is a big win. However, my test suites ran significantly slower. I decided to try using a desktop I had available.
First, here are the machines under test. My MacBook Pro is an M3 Max with 16 (12P+4E) cores and 48GB of RAM. My Linux box is an Intel 285K with 24 cores (8P+16E) and 64 GB of RAM. The box is a gaming desktop. I added a 10 year old Samsung SSD that I had laying around to install Linux. It was fast for its day, but the MacBook Pro almost certainly has a better SSD.
This is not an apples to apples comparison. The hardware and software differ. It is a comparison of a fairly high-end MacBook Pro with a fairly high-end x86_64 desktop running Linux. I won’t attempt to scientifically narrow down what factors contribute to the results I measured. I’m not making any conclusions regarding the performance of Apple Silicon vs. Intel or macOS vs. Linux. There are many confounding factors. But if you have a similar hardware choice and you work on the same type of projects I do, then these results may be useful to you.
I am aware there are various settings to tune that may impact VM and devcontainer performance on macOS. The only significant settings I changed or ensured were that I was using ARM64 Linux, not running through Rosetta, and I used virtiofs to mount the source code into the VM from the host.
The primary application I work on is a Ruby on Rails application. It does browser testing with Capybara, Selenium WebDriver, and Chromium. It uses parallel tests.
As a baseline, it takes 42 seconds to run the tests directly on macOS. Using the same machine, but using a devcontainer with a Colima VM it takes 77 seconds. Runtime is almost doubled by running in a devcontainer. But on the Linux box it only takes 24 seconds! Less than 1/3 the time of the Colima VM and less than 3/5 the time of the native macOS.
Other informal tests yielded similar results, some less and some more significant. But overall the Linux box was significantly faster.
One last note, the subjective experience of using VS Code with devcontainers is almost exactly the same experience whether using a Colima VM or a remote Linux box. Even when connecting from hundreds of miles away with Tailscale, the responsiveness difference was unnoticeable except in rare occasions.
YMMV, just wanted to share that if you are using a Mac but developing in devcontainers, it may be worth remoting to a Linux box.