Considering its goal and that it has those tools built-in, the most obvious usage scenario is to simply use nerdctl as a Docker CLI alternative to run commands against containerd.Īnother option or, actually, the option that is mentioned the most is to use Lima combined with Docker.
Lima launches Linux virtual machines and it was created to promote containerd and nerdctl ( contaiNERD ctl) to Mac users. Many articles mention Lima as an alternative.
Free Docker Desktop Alternative For Mac And Windows.Now, the concern with minikube is that, as an official Kubernetes project, it may deprecate Docker as a container runtime the same way Kubernetes did in late 2020. Since its main goal is to allow us to use Kubernetes locally, I think we can say minikube covers most of the important functionality of Docker Desktop by itself. Since we are dealing with the actual Docker itself, there are no concerns regarding compatibility and we can work the way we are used to. $ docker container ls # a bunch of minikube related containers will be listed $ docker run hello-world
minikube includes the Docker daemon so, if we install the Docker CLI on the Mac host, we can send instructions to that Engine. I also confess I didn't understand it immediately at first, but the idea was quite simple. It is the only tool that is a drop-in replacement for Docker Desktop. When searching for alternatives, I came across the article An Overview of Docker Desktop Alternatives where the author says: I must confess I had never thought of minikube as an alternative to Docker Desktop. Also, I didn't even test some of these options and the little test that I did was certainly not enough to find their limitations. Just a disclaimer that I've never used these options for actual work. Since it has WSL2, Docker Engine can be installed there independently from Docker Desktop, according to some articles. So, there may be options that are not meant to work on Windows, but I also came across solutions that only works on Windows. I did my research focusing more on the Mac side of things. So, I was curious to see what other options are there and I'm glad I did because I was not aware of some of them. Well, if it's a requirement for the job, I think it's a great product worth the price of the licensing, but it's always good to have alternatives for those of us who need them for one reason or another. But, that product packages the related tools nicely to work without effort on the user's end, as Docker requires features from a Linux Kernel (to run Linux containers) and Docker Desktop does the job of running it on a virtual machine behind the scenes for the tool to work. It contains the Docker CLI and the Docker Engine, and both were not affected by the changes and can still be used freely. Docker Desktopĭocker Desktop is basically a product targeting Mac and Windows. So, my idea is to list those options here along with some short explanations. I'm quite late, but I decided to take a look into what people are suggesting as alternatives. Since Docker announced it was changing its subscriptions and that Docker Desktop terms would also be affected, there have been numerous articles suggesting alternatives to it.