Rancher Desktop 1.0(suse.com)
suse.com
Rancher Desktop 1.0
https://www.suse.com/c/rancher_blog/rancher-desktop-1-0-0-has-arrived/
64 comments
What's the state of Rancher these days? I was handing over a clients project and looking for someone to maintain it long term. I chose Rancher in my ignorance, but all Rancher did was tank the project.
They installed their own halfbaked inhouse CloudNative Storage Provider, then quoted the client 50k to try to stabilize it. Their sales people were also nonstop trying to sell them on more consulting hours on top of the 50k they were taking in license fee for a 3 node cluster.
The whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that whenever I see Rancher I tell my clients to look for other options and run away as far as possible.
Now that Suse owns them I'm a bit more open to it, but I imagine there are still a lot of old rancher people in there.
Can anyone enlighten me on the current state of affairs?
They installed their own halfbaked inhouse CloudNative Storage Provider, then quoted the client 50k to try to stabilize it. Their sales people were also nonstop trying to sell them on more consulting hours on top of the 50k they were taking in license fee for a 3 node cluster.
The whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that whenever I see Rancher I tell my clients to look for other options and run away as far as possible.
Now that Suse owns them I'm a bit more open to it, but I imagine there are still a lot of old rancher people in there.
Can anyone enlighten me on the current state of affairs?
The latest version 2.6 has an issue where it can lose track of the cluster state, rendering it useless. (You had one job Rancher).
UI looks nice but is janky. Documentation is lacking, but sufficient. Longhorn works great (if you ignore CPU usage due to syncing when there's a lot of IOPS). Overal though self-hosting it has been pretty great for us from a usability perspective. Not sure if it's as enterprise-ready as they say though. Also haven't had to deal with their sales/support (yet).
I self-host rancher 2.6 for personal use and maintain a 3-node cluster. I find it enjoyable to work with though I only host ~13 different web applications: private docker registry, gitea, drone, plex media server, sagemath through jupyter, and a few personal projects.
It's probably unnecessary/overkill for single-user like myself, but so far I like it
It's probably unnecessary/overkill for single-user like myself, but so far I like it
We use rancher for a few clusters. The new UI a overhaul is atrocious and is very broken.
It feels like we're late to create the desktop experience where most things run in containers. My wish is to run something like Proxmox as a "stable base", and within it have a VM for my firewall (pfsense), my primary Linux OS (Fedora/Arch), a VM for services (Docker & k8s), and a VM for Windows gaming. I like the separation of concerns. I've wanted to do all of this on a laptop but I can't get a VM to exclusively take control of the GPU & display controller (overtake the laptop display panel).
For a long while now I've wanted a stable, slim base OS. I actually thought Rancher Desktop was a rebirth of RancherOS: https://rancher.com/docs/os/
I really liked the concept of a "system docker" and a "user docker". I thought Fedora CoreOS had potential to be the first Linux "Desktop" container distro.
Oh well, maybe a desktop distro that aims to containerize all apps is a 2023 thing. Still remember that Steam bug?
For a long while now I've wanted a stable, slim base OS. I actually thought Rancher Desktop was a rebirth of RancherOS: https://rancher.com/docs/os/
I really liked the concept of a "system docker" and a "user docker". I thought Fedora CoreOS had potential to be the first Linux "Desktop" container distro.
Oh well, maybe a desktop distro that aims to containerize all apps is a 2023 thing. Still remember that Steam bug?
Fedora Silverblue is a Linux desktop container distro
https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/
I have never heard of this (until now). Thank you! I've been loving NixOS so I hope it's easy to build the world like that. :-)
Isn’t that essentially what fedora Silverblue is?
It’s an immutable desktop OS where everything is ran in flatpaks/podman pods for the most part and it’s actually a really great experience.
Can play stellaris on steam with it for example with no issue.
It’s an immutable desktop OS where everything is ran in flatpaks/podman pods for the most part and it’s actually a really great experience.
Can play stellaris on steam with it for example with no issue.
I have never heard of this (until now). Thank you! I've been loving NixOS so I hope it's easy to build the world like that. :-)
No problem! I love it so much - it’s really simple. One thing I’d recommend is if you use vs code - to set it’s built in interpreter to use the toolbox:
https://www.carmenbianca.eu/en/post/2021-02-05-silverblue-de...
Specifically the “vscodium in a flatpak” (also of course works with the Microsoft version vscode )
https://www.carmenbianca.eu/en/post/2021-02-05-silverblue-de...
Specifically the “vscodium in a flatpak” (also of course works with the Microsoft version vscode )
You can do exactly this with proxmox or esxi. Create a main "gaming vm" to autostart with GPU + USB passthrough. Then you can manage your other vms from the web browser on your gaming vm.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm seeking a very particular setup. Currently you cannot get a VM/guest to exclusively control the display panel of a laptop. You can get it to take exclusive control of a GPU, even an integrated GPU, but not the display controller and laptop panel itself. Usually the laptop user is left running an external monitor for their "main display". I did see myself administering pfsense and the separate "services" VM from the web browser.
The best you can do is have the host/hypervisor own the laptop display, and then remote desktop to or "stream out" the guest framebuffer.
The best you can do is have the host/hypervisor own the laptop display, and then remote desktop to or "stream out" the guest framebuffer.
But what are you using to access this startup VM that's isn't clunky/laggy?
We're sort of desperately missing a high speed graphics option for VMs. Which is one of those things which feels like it should have become more prevalent by now with everyone throwing GPUs into server hardware and wanting to timeslice it amongst containers.
Have you tried Cubes OS?
Yes, but I don't consider that easier to maintain. The appeal of a dockerfile or k8s manifest means I can expect some degree of isolation, and easily distribute that experience to others. Getting something to run in Cube OS is more of the VM experience, than container experience. I do like both.
It looks like Rancher Desktop uses Lima VM (https://github.com/lima-vm/lima) under the hood, I suppose in the same way that Docker Desktop uses Hypervisor.framework on macos? This is the first I've heard about the Lima project. I'll be interested to see how file system performance with this compares to Docker Desktop on mac.
While I haven’t run rancher desktop, i have been running colima.
https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
Which also is built on top of lima.
It’s been great, some network wonkiness, and works on m1 perfectly.
The rancher devs have been contributing back to the project helping improve both.
https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
Which also is built on top of lima.
It’s been great, some network wonkiness, and works on m1 perfectly.
The rancher devs have been contributing back to the project helping improve both.
Cool! Haven't used it with containers (Docker Desktop has been good enough), but am quite a Lima fan.
The main issues I've had are in networking and you have to keep in mind that you have to explicitly specify writable directories. Other than that it seems pretty well comparable to WSL2.
The main issues I've had are in networking and you have to keep in mind that you have to explicitly specify writable directories. Other than that it seems pretty well comparable to WSL2.
These desktop applications look nice, but personally I’m much more comfortable with CLI tools. I have no idea what my colleagues are doing that use GUI git programs. I can’t even stand editor integration plugins.
Edit: On topic, just test k8s config changes in prod :^)
Edit: On topic, just test k8s config changes in prod :^)
You need Docker Desktop on macOS and Windows even if you don't want it. Please, send help :(
For Windows, you can run docker in WSL at least. It's also easy to install using the script at https://get.docker.com.
It will warn you about WSL and recommend Docker Desktop for Windows, which is funny since Docker Desktop can also run docker for you in WSL.
It will warn you about WSL and recommend Docker Desktop for Windows, which is funny since Docker Desktop can also run docker for you in WSL.
Could you really claim that installing Docker via WSL is actually running Docker on Windows? It's really hard for me to claim such. Rather, you're installing/running Docker via Ubuntu (or whatever image you use), while Windows is the host.
I think the context was replying to "You Need Docker Desktop", which used to be true with WSL1. WSL2 opens up the option to run regular Docker in the WSL2 instance, which doesn't have to be Ubuntu, but could be.
Sure you can. WSL abstracts a lot of the networking/integration between the host and VM, just like Docker Desktop does. The experiences are comparable.
I'm a friend of git GUIs because I find the complexity best represented graphically.
For Docker, however, I purely use shell commands (only using the GUI to start the engine) because that's what I know from servers.
The command line interface is the easiest interface to script around, but it's also probably the least discoverable.
GUI programs have much better discoverability. But ... it's generally hard to drive them with a keyboard.
Emacs' magit or lazydocker strike me as a nice balance. Not as expressive as the command line, but powerfully keyboard-focused.
GUI programs have much better discoverability. But ... it's generally hard to drive them with a keyboard.
Emacs' magit or lazydocker strike me as a nice balance. Not as expressive as the command line, but powerfully keyboard-focused.
I have been using Rancher Desktop since the day Docker announced they would charge corporations for Docker Desktop. I don't really need it much, but I genuinely could not have had a cleaner transition. I uninstalled Docker Desktop, and hit install on Rancher Desktop. Everything 'just worked' and I started using nerdctl. This was on Windows, and a few months ago now.
I tried to install it on my personal M1 Max Macbook, and it was annoying enough (the vm stuff, which was annoying with Docker Desktop) that I just used Multipass and installed docker. I would 100% recommend anyone dependent on Docker Desktop on Windows give it a shot.
I tried to install it on my personal M1 Max Macbook, and it was annoying enough (the vm stuff, which was annoying with Docker Desktop) that I just used Multipass and installed docker. I would 100% recommend anyone dependent on Docker Desktop on Windows give it a shot.
This is something I find exciting! I was looking at our infrastructure and between all the various services, we basically have recreated k8s only more expensive and fragmented and tied explicitly to AWS.
On top of that, our local test env is based on docker-compose so it often has issues matching exactly to the deployed env in the cloud once you add all the networking.
I've wanted to start moving us to Kubernetes so we can have a much closer env across the board. In order to do this, we would need to support both osx and Linux development, and for this I was investigating minikube but my previous XP with minikube left me not liking that solution long term.
I look forward to investigating this tool and seeing the potential in a local development workflow.
On top of that, our local test env is based on docker-compose so it often has issues matching exactly to the deployed env in the cloud once you add all the networking.
I've wanted to start moving us to Kubernetes so we can have a much closer env across the board. In order to do this, we would need to support both osx and Linux development, and for this I was investigating minikube but my previous XP with minikube left me not liking that solution long term.
I look forward to investigating this tool and seeing the potential in a local development workflow.
I blogged about using Linux containers on macOS, including research into the operation and features of solutions like minikube, lima/nerdctl, Rancher Desktop, and Docker Desktop. You may find it helpful.
https://cameronnemo.gitlab.io/posts/mac-os-containers/
https://cameronnemo.gitlab.io/posts/mac-os-containers/
Thank you, I will check it out
> we basically have recreated k8s only more expensive and fragmented
Exactly my driver for getting k8s (in the form of OpenShift) in place years ago to support a microservices push: if you want to deploy a fleet of a few hundred independent runtimes independently of one another, you could waste a lot of time and effort building everything that's needed to support that out of bits of VMware and F5 irules and things, or you can use something designed to support the case from day one.
Exactly my driver for getting k8s (in the form of OpenShift) in place years ago to support a microservices push: if you want to deploy a fleet of a few hundred independent runtimes independently of one another, you could waste a lot of time and effort building everything that's needed to support that out of bits of VMware and F5 irules and things, or you can use something designed to support the case from day one.
Am I the only one that's starting to get a bit annoyed when random software for the desktop is getting called "XYZ Desktop"? I came here expecting a new desktop environment or WM called 'Rancher'.
It is an indicator of mindset shift in the larger populance.
In a word where mobile and web apps are becoming more and more popular, calling a product a 'software solution' or an 'app' does not immediately make it obvious where the software will run.
Adding the word desktop makes it stand out to the audience who is looking for desktop software (and presumably who don't want to setup server side software, fiddle with cli or use an externally hosted orchestration service).
I recommend embracing the new reality that a vast majority of consumer grade software in present day world does not target desktops.
In a word where mobile and web apps are becoming more and more popular, calling a product a 'software solution' or an 'app' does not immediately make it obvious where the software will run.
Adding the word desktop makes it stand out to the audience who is looking for desktop software (and presumably who don't want to setup server side software, fiddle with cli or use an externally hosted orchestration service).
I recommend embracing the new reality that a vast majority of consumer grade software in present day world does not target desktops.
I think the 'desktop' naming convention is older than most OSS WM's/desktop environments, it was even used for games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_His_Desktop_...
(now that would be a great name for a WM ;) )
(now that would be a great name for a WM ;) )
I agree, it should be called "XYZ for Desktop".
A related thread from a few months ago:
Rancher Desktop, a Docker Desktop Replacement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28835690 - Oct 2021 (220 comments)
Rancher Desktop, a Docker Desktop Replacement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28835690 - Oct 2021 (220 comments)
From https://rancherdesktop.io/ :
> Kubernetes and Container Management on the Desktop:
> An open-source desktop application for Mac, Windows and Linux.
> Rancher Desktop runs Kubernetes and container management on your desktop. You can choose the version of Kubernetes you want to run. You can build, push, pull, and run container images using either containerd or Moby (dockerd). The container images you build can be run by Kubernetes immediately without the need for a registry.
How does Rancher Desktop compare to Docker Desktop in terms of e.g. k8s support?
> Kubernetes and Container Management on the Desktop:
> An open-source desktop application for Mac, Windows and Linux.
> Rancher Desktop runs Kubernetes and container management on your desktop. You can choose the version of Kubernetes you want to run. You can build, push, pull, and run container images using either containerd or Moby (dockerd). The container images you build can be run by Kubernetes immediately without the need for a registry.
How does Rancher Desktop compare to Docker Desktop in terms of e.g. k8s support?
I think they ship k3s, which is sort if vanilla. It works great in my (limited) experience.
A key point around Rancher Desktop's k8s (actually k3s) support that stands out is that it allows you to use any k3s version and swap between them. This is great for those that want to test their workloads on different k8s versions right on their desktop.
This is the Spite Store of containers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YlA6gtha-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YlA6gtha-w
The killer feature over Docker for Mac would be memory ballooning. With this, there would be no need to specify a specific amount of memory, and the Linux VM would live happily alongside Mac OS. I know this is a limitation of Virtualisation/Hypervisor Framework apparently, but still.
It works wonder on WSL2, for instance.
Assigning all CPUs shouldn't do anything impactful really.
It works wonder on WSL2, for instance.
Assigning all CPUs shouldn't do anything impactful really.
Can it be used to run Docker Compose workloads? As I understand, the tool is launched because at the end of January the Docker Desktop grace period elapses and it becomes paid for large business.
You can install docker-compose independently, it's apache2 licensed unlike docker-desktop.
On macOS
On macOS
brew install docker-composeFor anyone reading this: Rancher Desktop w/dockerd powers docker-compose perfectly (installed via pip3), at least on some of my projects `docker-compose up --build` ran out of the box without any problems.
Yes, nerdctl compose will work for most of the use cases. Check this compatibility guide - https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/blob/master/docs/compo...
I am also curious about this.
Reading the FAQ (https://docs.rancherdesktop.io/faq):
*Q: I can no longer run docker compose after installing Rancher Desktop and uninstalling Docker Desktop, what happened?*
*A: The docker compose subcommand is bundled as part of a Docker Desktop installation and is removed when uninstalled. Follow these instructions to install it.*
It also stated you can have both Docker Desktop and Rancher Desktop installed, but only one can be running at a time as it shares the same docker socket. I might try installing Rancher Desktop and stopping Docker Desktop and seeing if it all works as expected.
Reading the FAQ (https://docs.rancherdesktop.io/faq):
*Q: I can no longer run docker compose after installing Rancher Desktop and uninstalling Docker Desktop, what happened?*
*A: The docker compose subcommand is bundled as part of a Docker Desktop installation and is removed when uninstalled. Follow these instructions to install it.*
It also stated you can have both Docker Desktop and Rancher Desktop installed, but only one can be running at a time as it shares the same docker socket. I might try installing Rancher Desktop and stopping Docker Desktop and seeing if it all works as expected.
I have not tried it, but I imagine you can. There is an option to use dockerd in the VM.
There is Podman Compose which will what you want. I particularly like Podman, because you can use it for Minikube, independently, rootless, etc.
FWIW podman does not work as a driver for minikube on Apple Silicon. Really hoping it gets sorted out because that’s probably what I would use.
It looks like it does now: https://podman.io/blogs/2021/10/04/m1macs.html
It's unclear from this website or the landing page of Rancher Desktop, can I use this to just run containers without involving the bloated mess which is Kubernetes? I just want to have something to run the container runtime cross-platform locally, without involving Kubernetes as I already run a different service for container management on my servers.
can't we do better than electron?
seriously?
a whole freaking browser only just to display few sliders, combobox and buttons?
this is very sad and concerning, either people are clueless, or they are clueless, i see no other reasons; you really not care at all, do you?
you use go already, use that https://fyne.io/
seriously?
a whole freaking browser only just to display few sliders, combobox and buttons?
this is very sad and concerning, either people are clueless, or they are clueless, i see no other reasons; you really not care at all, do you?
you use go already, use that https://fyne.io/
Such a tiresome argument.
We need a whole freaking browser, only to display some text on this Web 1.0 hackernews website?
If the tool works well and doesn't use too many resources (see: VS Code, Spotify, Postman, among others that use a "browser" based UI), why does it matter?
Let developers choose the tools they want to build the things they want to build. You want a k8s desktop app written in fyne-io? Go for it!
We need a whole freaking browser, only to display some text on this Web 1.0 hackernews website?
If the tool works well and doesn't use too many resources (see: VS Code, Spotify, Postman, among others that use a "browser" based UI), why does it matter?
Let developers choose the tools they want to build the things they want to build. You want a k8s desktop app written in fyne-io? Go for it!
> If the tool works well and doesn't use too many resources (see: VS Code, Spotify, Postman, among others that use a "browser" based UI), why does it matter?
hahaha, i see, it's a lost battle, bloaters of computers, you won
hope you not from EU, i would be ashamed
> Let developers choose the tools they want to build the things they want to build. You want a k8s desktop app written in fyne-io? Go for it!
slave mindset, empower the idiocracy, never give feedack, never stand up when you think wrong things, negative feedback = troll obviously
reminds me of a packed bus, there was that random drunk dude harassing that other random guy
everyone stood silent
that's our society, and that's why it's trash
another startup with 100M in VC funding and generates 1k dollar in profit
but i am wrong, i always am wrong
hahaha, i see, it's a lost battle, bloaters of computers, you won
hope you not from EU, i would be ashamed
> Let developers choose the tools they want to build the things they want to build. You want a k8s desktop app written in fyne-io? Go for it!
slave mindset, empower the idiocracy, never give feedack, never stand up when you think wrong things, negative feedback = troll obviously
reminds me of a packed bus, there was that random drunk dude harassing that other random guy
everyone stood silent
that's our society, and that's why it's trash
another startup with 100M in VC funding and generates 1k dollar in profit
but i am wrong, i always am wrong
> reminds me of a packed bus, there was that random drunk dude harassing that other random guy
> everyone stood silent
Hardly. I have no problem with you stating your opinion, and would not downvote anyone for doing so. I'm simply saying that I hear this opinion all the time and don't agree with it.
> hope you not from EU, i would be ashamed
Not sure how my country of origin is at all relevant here, but.. OK.
Hardly. I have no problem with you stating your opinion, and would not downvote anyone for doing so. I'm simply saying that I hear this opinion all the time and don't agree with it.
> hope you not from EU, i would be ashamed
Not sure how my country of origin is at all relevant here, but.. OK.
This is depressing actually.
Instead of working to simplify the desktop, people are pouring energy into solutions that further complexity everything.
I don't understand the comments on this thread that express excitement and enthusiasm.
To this day, the UX of the linux desktop is subpar. This is caused by the complexity involved in running a gnu/linux system.
We do not need additional layers of complexity.
We need to collapse the layers and simplify the architecture of everything.
Instead of working to simplify the desktop, people are pouring energy into solutions that further complexity everything.
I don't understand the comments on this thread that express excitement and enthusiasm.
To this day, the UX of the linux desktop is subpar. This is caused by the complexity involved in running a gnu/linux system.
We do not need additional layers of complexity.
We need to collapse the layers and simplify the architecture of everything.
Pretty sure this is a non sequitur. This isn't a desktop environment, but a desktop application to manage containers. Right?
I feel you hit reply on the wrong thread ... this seems to have nothing to do with Rancher Desktop?!?
Rancher Desktop is
> an open source app for desktop Kubernetes and container management on Mac, Windows and Linux
What does that have to do with Linux desktop UX or running a GNU/Linux system?
I could see objecting to k8s and containers in general on the basis of too many layers, but by the time someone's looking at using Rancher Desktop they've probably made that decision already. (For instance, this caught my eye because at work we ship everything in containers. Even if I disliked that, there's no way I'm ever moving the whole company off containerization, so I want the best tools to do the job I have.)
> an open source app for desktop Kubernetes and container management on Mac, Windows and Linux
What does that have to do with Linux desktop UX or running a GNU/Linux system?
I could see objecting to k8s and containers in general on the basis of too many layers, but by the time someone's looking at using Rancher Desktop they've probably made that decision already. (For instance, this caught my eye because at work we ship everything in containers. Even if I disliked that, there's no way I'm ever moving the whole company off containerization, so I want the best tools to do the job I have.)
I was meta-commenting about other comments in this thread that imply the future of desktop is all containers and that this would be a good thing.
I played with this when first announced, and then now and all the things I wanted when i first tried it out are now fixed (mainly transparent networking..) and the option for dockerd container engine makes migrating pretty simple.