Docker – Installation on Windows

A quick walk through of Docker installation on Windows 10.

1. Downloading the binaries

Download the binaries from the official website.

2. Install WSL 2

Install WSL 2 following instructions provided in the Microsoft website. This step can be done before installing the docker or alternatively we can let docker installer install it for us. Windows Sub System for Linux provides environment to run GNU/Linux environment , command line tools , utilities directly on Windows without installing a VM or dual boot .

3. Installing Docker

Go to the place where we have downloaded the Docker Desktop Installer.exe , right click Run as administrator.
Unlike other installers , Docker installer will not prompt us with many options . The only two options that we will see during installation are “Install required Windows components for WSL 2 “ and “Add shortcut to desktop”. Select both the options and click ok to start the installation.

Wait for the installation to go through.

Once the installation is successful , we will see the following screen :

4. Starting Docker Desktop

Before we can execute any Docker command, we have to first start the Docker desktop. We can start the Docker Desktop from the start menu or from the desktop icon.

The status of the Docker engine is shown at the bottom left corner, it should be green before we can interact with Docker cli .

5. Optional Configuration

There are some configurations in Docker , which are good to have right from the start . Click on the gear icon on the top right side of the Docker Desktop dashboard .

Enabling Kubernetes (Optional)

Navigate to Kubernetes tab and then click on the Enable Kubernetes check box and then click on “Apply & Restart”. This is the fastest way to bring up k8s on our machine.

Enabling WSL 2 Integration

If we have installed any other operating system using WSL2, we don’t have to install Docker once again. We can use the same installation here also by enabling the integration.
Go to settings > Resources > WSL Integration > Enable the integration for the installed OS .

6. Verification

Now that installation is complete, we verify the installation using the following command :
docker info
This will display the details of of Docker Desktop .

For more on this , visit official documentation .