Provide installation instructions for Docker Engine on Windows WITHOUT Docker Desktop

[benrobot]

File: engine/install/index.md

Please provide installation instructions for Docker Engine WITHOUT Docker Desktop. The docker desktop UI is pretty but I've never used it.

As I understand Docker Engine is free and open source and the overview page (https://docs.docker.com/engine/) claims Docker Engine includes the daemon and the cli. All I've ever used was the CLI.

[thaJeztah]

Note that the installation instructions under https://docs.docker.com/engine/ are to install the Docker Engine on Linux, which is not Docker Desktop (Docker Desktop is only available for Mac and Windows. It includes the Docker Engine, but also many other components to make it work on Mac or Windows).

As I understand Docker Engine is free and open source

Correct, the Docker Engine and CLI are open source; the cli is built from https://github.com/docker/cli, https;//github.com/docker/buildx, and https://github.com/docker/scan-cli-plugin. The Engine is packaged from the source code in the Moby project's repository (https://github.com/moby/moby), and the BuildKit repository (https://github.com/moby/buildkit) for the runtime bits, it uses the containerd.io package, which contains the containerd runtime (from https://github.com/containerd/containerd), and the runc OCI runtime (from https://github.com/opencontainers/runc)

All I've ever used was the CLI

If you're running Linux, and only need the CLI (e.g., if the Docker Engine is running remotely), you can follow the instructions for your Linux distro to set up the package repository, but in the "install docker engine" step (for example for Ubuntu; https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/#install-docker-engine), only specify the docker-ce-cli package.

So instead of:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Run:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce-cli

After that, the CLI should be installed:

docker version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           20.10.8
 API version:       1.41
 Go version:        go1.16.6
 Git commit:        3967b7d
 Built:             Fri Jul 30 19:54:27 2021
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
 Experimental:      true
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

And you can use it to connect with a Docker Engine that's not running on your machine, e.g.

docker -H ssh://swarm-test-01 version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           20.10.8
 API version:       1.41
 Go version:        go1.16.6
 Git commit:        3967b7d
 Built:             Fri Jul 30 19:54:27 2021
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
 Experimental:      true

Server: Docker Engine - Community
 Engine:
  Version:          20.10.8
  API version:      1.41 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.16.6
  Git commit:       75249d8
  Built:            Fri Jul 30 19:52:16 2021
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.4.9
  GitCommit:        e25210fe30a0a703442421b0f60afac609f950a3
 runc:
  Version:          1.0.1
  GitCommit:        v1.0.1-0-g4144b63
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0

[benrobot]

My apologies, I believe I omitted a key detail in my request for instructions. I'm looking to install the "free and open source" version of Docker Engine on Windows.

[thaJeztah]

Windows builds are here: https://download.docker.com/win/static/stable/x86_64/. Both CLI and Engine are in that package (but note that Windows engine can only run Windows containers)

[benrobot]

Windows builds are here: https://download.docker.com/win/static/stable/x86_64/. Both CLI and Engine are in that package (but note that Windows engine can only run Windows containers)

Thank you for the link. This GitHub issue is a request to put that link along with some instructions on how to install Docker Engine on Windows somewhere under https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. For example, https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/windows might be good and, obviously, add links (unless they're automatic) to it from the left nav and the main install page.

[rioka]

Windows builds are here: https://download.docker.com/win/static/stable/x86_64/. Both CLI and Engine are in that package (but note that Windows engine can only run Windows containers)

So is there a simple way to run both Windows and Linux containers in Windows 10 without installing docker desktop?

[thaJeztah]

Installation instructions for the binary packages for windows were restored in #13676 (https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/binaries/#install-server-and-client-binaries-on-windows)

So is there a simple way to run both Windows and Linux containers in Windows 10 without installing docker desktop?

I've seen some blog posts on how to install the Linux engine on Windows (inside WSL2), or running a Linux VM, but it may depend on your use-case wether or not those can act as a replacement for Docker Desktop (a large part of Docker Desktop is to make this easy to use).

With #13676 being merged, I think this ticket can be closed, but feel free to continue the conversation

[docker-robott]

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