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@witty-city-90946 - Rancher Desktop uses containerd by default. So, you don't have Docker CLI available. You have nerdctl. You can switch to dockerd, but I'd recommend the better solution is to alias nerdctl to docker in your terminal's config file. Should be something like:

Set-Alias -Name docker -Value nerdctl

Another suggestion I'd make is to use WSL for any development work in Windows.

No, the

docker

CLI should always be available (but may not work if the container engine is not set to

dockerd

.

@fast-garage-66093 - Ah. Ok. This is a constant source for confusion though. I do believe, docker CLI should only be installed if dockerd is selected as the container runtime. My 2 cents.

It is included in the application and put on the

PATH

with all the other utilities. Adding/removing it whenever the user changes the container engine makes it even more confusing, because then the user will have to restart all terminal windows before the change becomes active. Inconvenient and easy to forget.

That could easily be put in as a remark in the change process in RD, once it is done. "As part of the container runtime change, we've installed X cli and updated

paths

accordingly. Please remember to restart any open terminals to see these changes."

Yeah, but how is this better than not having to do anything? 😄 What is the issue with having

docker.exe

on your

PATH

if you are not using it anyways?

Because users don't realize RD uses containerd and end up with this error.

Yeah, but the user actively selected

containerd

, so seems to be confused anyways. And they would just get a different error message when they try to run

docker

and it is not on the

PATH

, so they would still be confused. Unless we wrap the tool with a shim that detects this.

I haven't installed RD for a while now. Is there a selection during installation?

Yes, the first-run dialog looks like this (and

dockerd

is the default)

Hmm... ok. Interesting. I could swear when I installed RD many moons ago, containerd was default. It was at a time where I had a large knowledge gap in k8s too. 😛 Like 3 years ago. I haven't used RD much since either, as I have a remote development setup in a k8s cluster setup up on bare metal servers. 🤷‍♂️ So, I apologize for misinformation. I need to fix my reply.

The default was switched to

dockerd

in Release Rancher Desktop 1.9 from June 2023.

Aha! Ok. My bad. Sort of. 😁