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Comment by arcanemachiner | Hacker News Reader

> unlike docker in my experience

You have piqued my curiosity. What does Docker Desktop do that the CLI cannot?

`docker machine` was deprecated in favor of Docker Desktop in order to funnel people towards paid licenses. But there's no real reason Docker on non-Linux should need a GUI.

Hi, I'm the founder of Docker. The decision to launch Docker Desktop, and deprecate Docker Machine, had nothing to do with revenue. Desktop was free when we launched it in 2016, and it remained free until 2021. By then Docker had a new CEO, a new board, and I was gone. So the two events (launch and monetization) could not be more disconnected.

The reason we launched Docker Desktop (initially known as "Docker for Mac") was to make the user experience better: easier to install, better integrated with the system (virtualization APIs, keychain, VPNs, etc), and better support for host volumes.

I do so wish we could have those features without needed a desktop app for them. There’s never a case where I’d want to run Docker Desktop for anything GUI.

You can't get around packaging it as a desktop app - that's how you get the seamless "drag into Applications folder, double-click" install experience. I agree you don't necessarily need a full-blown desktop GUI. The original version shipped with the whale menu bar icon, a basic settings page, and that's it.

I do think it makes sense to add more GUI features over time, to make Docker more approachable - not everyone is a CLI wizard. But, it shouldn't make the app slower or annoying to use for those who don't need it.

In my experience, Docker Desktop was needed in order to use the CLI in Windows. It seemed fairly heavyweight as well. Maybe that has all changed now, not sure. In any case with podman on Windows, no UI is needed and you don't have to shell into WSL to use it.

You can run the regular Docker engine inside WSL2 and run the regular Docker client on Windows with DOCKER_HOST set. This has been true since 2016 when we originally got WSL2, with the exception that we used to have to enable systemd (but no longer do).

Good to know. What are the steps to get this working assuming you already have WSL enabled on your machine, but don't have any distros yet?

It should be along these lines:

- Install Ubuntu distro in WSL2.

- Create an ssh key pair on the Windows side using ssh-keygen.

In Ubuntu:

- Install Docker engine using Docker's apt-get instructions for Ubuntu.

- Add the ssh public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

In Windows:

- Run "wsl hostname -I" to get your WSL2 hostname.

- Test "ssh user@wsl-host", using the WSL2 hostname. It should work without prompting for a password.

- Unzip docker.exe somewhere.

- In your user environment variables, set PATH to include the directory with docker.exe, and set DOCKER_HOST to "ssh://user@wsl-host", using the WSL2 hostname.

That should be it; you should now be able to run docker normally from your Windows user, using file context from the Windows side.

Thanks for the information. I think for some use cases this is perfectly fine but for others, a kind of one-stop-shopping approach is nice as well. For instance with podman (not desktop, just the cli), you only have to run: "winget install -e --id RedHat.Podman" and you are good to go. This is nice, particularly on bigger teams when you want to reduce friction to a bare minimum.

Definitely. Podman Desktop lacks the onerous commercial license restrictions that Docker Desktop has, which is what drove me to set this up. Getting the Docker Desktop licenses tracked and paid at work was more hassle than setting up Docker manually. But Podman Desktop doesn't have any of that hassle, which is awesome.

Note that you don't need Podman Desktop if you don't want the UI. That is the sweet spot that we landed on. Of course if you want the UI that is fine as well - they just aren't bundled together in the same way. Of course, as you pointed out, even Docker / Docker Desktop isn't quite as coupled as it appears on the surface which is great to know.

Since they mention Windows, I believe this is a reference to the fact that you cannot (easily) install the Docker CLI without Docker Desktop. Podman does not have this issue.

You absolutely can run docker on the CLI in WSL2. The only requirement is you have systemd running in your WSL distro, which is fully supported.

Yes, of course that works, but then you have to start up and shell into WSL. With podman, you can run all commands directly in Windows which is more seamless. Plus, getting it working is just a matter of running "winget install -e --id RedHat.Podman". This is particularly helpful when trying to roll things out for larger teams as they don't have to know anything about WSL and everything integrates in their environment seamlessly. Of course, just using Linux is preferable for development if you can get away with it.

> You absolutely can run docker on the CLI in WSL2.

But again, they're talking about Windows, not Linux-in-Windows or virtualized Linux on Windows. Just because you can do something in WSL2 doesn't mean you "can do it on Windows", as much as you "can run systemd and Wayland on Windows" because you could run it inside a Linux VM...

Yes. For some the distinction between the two is almost nothing as WSL is pretty seamless. However, using Podman directly in your normal Windows shell opens up more use cases. Podman is of course running everything behind the scenes using WSL.

> For some the distinction between the two is almost nothing as WSL is pretty seamless

WSL1 yes, but not WSL2, which the parent explicitly mentioned. WSL2 is just virtualization with a fancier name, might as well use VirtualBox and similar at that point.

While it is fundamentally a VM, it is far more seamless than running a regular VirtualBox.

Your posts in this thread seem to be focused on the inability to use Docker from the Windows shell, but it's not true: you just need to set DOCKER_HOST. Then the Windows client can connect to a Linux engine in WSL2. Docker engine in WSL2 runs as a systemd unit and doesn't need to be manually started. Podman/Docker Desktop are doing far less work here than you might be expecting. They are just automating this setup for you. I run this setup and it is genuinely a one-time nothingburger. If you have a bunch of Windows machines, you can have them all share one Linux Docker engine if you want, by pointing DOCKER_HOST at the same host.

Docker publishes the Docker CLI for Windows directly, the same as every other platform. You just download it and run it; it does not even require installation. With DOCKER_HOST set, you can access the Docker engine in WSL2 from the Windows side. You don't need to shell into WSL2 to interact with Docker and it can use your Windows files. https://download.docker.com/win/static/stable/x86_64 -- unzip, grab self-contained docker.exe. Docker Desktop and Podman Desktop automate this a bit, but it's not a big lift to set this up with regular Docker yourself.

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