Setting Up My Mac

Focus Area: Development Tools

🎯 Context & Objective

Getting my Mac ready with all the tools I’ll need for DevOps work. Making sure everything’s installed, configured, and actually working before I dive into the heavy stuff.

✅ Work Recap & Achievements

Dev Environment Ready: Installed and configured the core tools for containers, orchestration, cloud work, and automation.

Testing Everything: Didn’t just install stuff—actually tested each tool to make sure it works and plays nice with the others.

Performance Tweaks: Adjusted settings for better performance and smoother workflow.

What I set up:

Homebrew - package manager for macOS
Docker Desktop - for containers
Kubernetes (kubectl + local clusters) - for orchestration practice
VirtualBox - for running VMs
Dev Tools - Python, Node.js, Git, VS Code with extensions
Cloud CLIs - AWS, Azure, and GCP tools

🧗 Challenges & Struggles

Version Conflicts: Ran into some issues with different tool versions, especially Python dependencies. Had to figure out how to manage multiple versions cleanly.

Resource Competition: Docker Desktop and VirtualBox both want system resources. Had to tweak memory and CPU settings to keep both running smoothly.

Config Quirks: Each tool has its own setup requirements. VS Code extensions, Docker networking, Kubernetes contexts—lots of small details to get right.

📚 Key Learnings & Progress

What I learned:

macOS package management with Homebrew
Docker Desktop setup and resource tuning
Local Kubernetes for testing apps
Managing multiple tools without conflicts

Understanding the Pipeline: Started seeing how these tools connect—from writing code locally, to containerizing it, to running it in Kubernetes.

⏭️ Next Steps & Closing Thoughts

Not the most exciting work, but necessary. Having everything set up properly means I can focus on learning instead of fighting with installation problems.

Testing was important—better to find issues now than in the middle of a project.

Next: hands-on Linux server work. Setting up a Debian VM and rebuilding the “Born2BeRoot” project with a DevOps spin. 🏗️