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fast-ice-89102

05/11/2023, 2:42 PM
Hi, thinking of giving Rancher Desktop a spin on my Windows 10 (Enterprise) PC. The Installation instructions say that WSL would be installed when installing it. However, what is the behaviour if WSL2 is already installed and I have 2 other WSL distros installed (Ubuntu 22.04 and Alpine) ? I'd expect RD installer to skip the WSL2 installation part, leaving my existing distros untouched and installing only the distro needed for RD. Also if I were to uninstall Rancher Desktop, would it leave the WSL2 and my other 2 distros behind untouched ?
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wide-mechanic-33041

05/11/2023, 2:53 PM
yup it will skip it and you will just see 2 more distros registered
and in the prefs for RD you will see the ability to integrate with those other distros
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fast-ice-89102

05/11/2023, 3:35 PM
Thanks, sounds good.
Just curious however, what does RD's ability to integrate with those other distros mean ? RD could use those as Worker nodes ?
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fast-garage-66093

05/11/2023, 3:51 PM
It means that
/var/run/docker.sock
will be made available in those distros and that
~/.kube/config
is linked up. Maybe something else; not sure. Essentially just that you can talk to Rancher Desktop from within those distros.
Note that Rancher Desktop may still attempt to install WSL2 if the already installed version comes from the Windows store, as it doesn't detect that version correctly from the installer. The app however will still use the store version, if it is installed, and ignore the older version that might get added by the installer.