I like to hack on Linux and recently I have been messing around with an Arch Linux distro called Manjaro. For some of my side projects I want to run I need a Kubernetes cluster running locally. I didn't really want to deal with setting up Minikube so I started looking for an alternative.
I use Rancher Desktop at my day job on a Macbook Pro and have been impressed with how easy it makes working with Kubernetes locally. So, I thought I'd try it on my Linux box as well. To my surprise, it was easy to set up on Arch, and it was just as easy to work with Kubernetes.

But what is Rancher Desktop?

Rancher Desktop can be thought of as a replacement for Docker Desktop. It runs Kubernetes (using the lightweight k3s) and container management on your desktop and you can build, push, pull, and run container images locally. Additionally, Rancher Desktop allows Kubernetes containers to be run without being pushed to a registry. It provides common tools used in container management such as kubectl, helm, and the Docker CLI. To get all this container goodness, download and run the application.

Install steps

pass setup

Rancher Desktop uses pass to secure credentials to Docker login and nerdctl login. pass is known as the standard unix password manager and provides tooling around adding, editing, generating and retrieving passwords. For more information on pass see here.

sudo pacman -S pass

Next, generate a gpg key

gpg --generate-key

The output will be something like this: 8CBBDE9E1344436CD920569B39D966B655EB2207
Now initialize pass by passing this key ID to it:

pass init 8CBBDE9E1344436CD920569B39D966B655EB2207

Install via AppImage

Download the AppImage here. To run the AppImage you will need to make it executable. In a terminal, change directory to wherever you downloaded the AppImage and run this command:

chmod +x rancher-desktop-latest-x86_64.AppImage

Now you can run the AppImage:

./rancher-desktop-latest-x86_64.AppImage

And there you have it, you should see Rancher Desktop starting up. The start up will include a couple of pop ups asking for access to your PATH and it may take a couple of minutes for kubernetes to start. Once started, you can run docker or kubectl commands to start building and deploying containers!

I'm a big fan of Rancher desktop since its allowed me to easily build and deploy Kubernetes apps locally. If you haven't tried it out and don't want to deal with the complexity of minikube, give Rancher Desktop a shot. Leave a comment if you enjoy Rancher Desktop as well!

Photo by Kerry: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mountain-near-house-534415/