rd VS Dokku

So, please please solve this request here: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/18...

https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases

Then in Rancher Desktop you enable WSL integration as shown here:

> docker desktop is pretty dead now that it's got restrictive licensing etc...

It would probably be nice to hear more about why you think this is! I've certainly heard of some having to move away from Docker Desktop.

However, at the scale where you need a license (250 employees or 10 million $ in annual revenue) it's not quite as big of an issue, especially at their current pricing per seat: https://www.docker.com/pricing/

> stick to standard open source tools like Colima etc...

Sticking to open source is a great idea!

I think mentioning that Colima runs on macOS and Linux only at the moment is also a good idea: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

A large market share of the Docker Desktop installs are Windows in particular (since it's "the one way" how most install Docker nowadays, as opposed to not really needing a GUI or the supporting tools on Linux).

In another comment I mentioned Podman Desktop as a mostly viable alternative: https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop

Then there's also Rancher Desktop as well: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop

Regardless, it's nice to see reputable orgs behind the open source projects as well, which gives a bit more credence to their chances of surviving for the years to come.

We evaluated alternatives for docker desktop and will stick to https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop now. It works really good and is fast. The big advantage instead of other competitors is that you can choose dockerd as runtime (so you don’t have to use containerd and nerdctl, which somekind of are drop in replacements - but they are not!)

Locally it's Rancher Desktop, and in a cloud Azure Container Apps is just awesome.

I am using Rancher Desktop, but I hollow it out and delete the included node to install k3d :) Now that https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/985 is closed it should be a bit easier, but I didn't have any of the problems these folks mentioned with the workaround.

We're considering Rancher instead but it doesn't seem to be very mature. One of our devs is already using it and is having this issue: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/1274

Port forwarding is currently broken if you use dockerd but it will be fixed in the next release or you can run a command to fix it yourself. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/12...

It fails to setup some filesystem links because of Unix permissions. You can fix it in command line. See https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/11...

If you put your computer into sleep, the VM time will be out of sync. It's going to be fixed in the next release I believe. It's an old classic bug that happened to me with WSL so it was nice to see it again. https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/83...

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.

Dokku is a lightweight and open-source PaaS platform that simplifies application deployment by leveraging Docker. With Dokku, developers can easily push their applications using Git, allowing Dokku to build and run them in isolated containers. Its CLI-only approach and plugin architecture make it highly extensible. Dokku's modular plugins enable features like database integration, Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, and automated Slack notifications, giving developers flexibility and control over their PaaS environment.

This is a great tool if you want PaaS like UX but just want to run Rails on a single VM https://dokku.com/