Husklet

Husklet is a container runtime that executes Linux containers natively on Apple Silicon macOS by running a JIT-compiled userspace kernel instead of a virtual machine. It implements the Docker Engine API, so existing docker commands and images work unchanged. The tool supports three runtimes: native ARM64 Linux, x86-64 Linux via JIT emulation, and macOS, all without hypervisor overhead.

Designed for developers who need isolated, reproducible Linux environments for everyday development work, Husklet installs as a per-user daemon without requiring root access. It provides real container isolation through overlay image layers, namespaces, cgroups, and networking, while offering significantly faster performance than VM-based alternatives—up to 23× faster on compute-intensive tasks. The project is built with Rust and C, as shown in its GitHub repository.