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Nerdctl Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to nerdctl
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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Moby
The Moby Project - a collaborative project for the container ecosystem to assemble container-based systems
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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registry.k8s.io
This project is the repo for registry.k8s.io, the production OCI registry service for Kubernetes' container image artifacts
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NGINX Unit
NGINX Unit is a lightweight and versatile open-source web app server that has three core capabilities. It is a HTTP reverse proxy, a web server for static media assets, and an application server that can natively execute application code in seven different languages.
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nerdctl
contaiNERD CTL - Docker-compatible CLI for containerd, with support for Compose, Rootless, eStargz, OCIcrypt, IPFS, ... (by AkihiroSuda)
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better nerdctl alternative or higher similarity.
nerdctl discussion
nerdctl reviews and mentions
Posts with mentions or reviews of nerdctl.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-04-23.
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Kubernetes Without Docker: Why Container Runtimes Are Changing the Game in 2025
nerdctl CLI for containerd (Docker replacement) Feels like Docker. But lighter. And hipster-approved.
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How to be Test Driven with Spark: Chapter 5: Leverage spark in a container
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of containers and docker images, I suggest you have a look at docker. It will be leveraged here to start the Spark server for the tests; it's important to mention there are other opensource alternatives like podman or nerdctl to allow containerization.
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Creating containers with containerd on ARM
NERDCTL_VERSION=2.0.3 wget https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/releases/download/v2.0.3/nerdctl-$NERDCTL_VERSION-linux-arm64.tar.gz tar -xzvf nerdctl-$NERDCTL_VERSION-linux-arm64.tar.gz -C /sbin CNI_VERSION wget https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins/releases/download/v1.6.2/cni-plugins-linux-arm64-vCNI_VERSION.tgz mkdir -p /opt/cni/bin tar -xzvf cni-plugins-linux-arm64-vCNI_VERSION.tgz -C /opt/cni/bin
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Techniques I Use to Create a Great User Experience for Shell Scripts
Here's a script that left me in awe the first time I saw it:
https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/blob/main/extras/rootl...
I have since copied this pattern for many scripts: logging functions, grouping all global vars and constants at the top and creating subcommands using shift.
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5 Alternatives to Docker Desktop
Rancher Desktop allows you to choose between the Moby engine (offered by Continered) and the dockerd engine (offered by Docker) for building, pushing, and running containers. Compared with Docker Desktop, which provides Docker CLI as a CLI tool, Rancher provides both kubectl and nerdctl for managing Kubernetes and containers, respectively.
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Colima k8s nix setup
What about the docker-cli? colima also ships with a docker-compatible cli to interact with containerd called nerdctl. We can execute the same docker cli commands like:
- Nerdctl v2 Beta
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Nginx Unit – Universal web app server
Using nerdctl: https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl
I'd really disagree that compose files are somehow one-shot, or blindly modified. To the contrary, really, we have them checked in with the source code. Upon deployment to the cluster, the (running) services will be intelligently updated or replaced (in a rolling manner, causing zero downtime). LXC might be more elegant, but I have no idea what simple, file-based format I could use to let engineers describe the environment their app should run in without compose.
I need something that even junior devs can start up with a single command, that can be placed in the VCS along with the code, and that will not require deep Linux knowledge to get running. Open for suggestions here, really.
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Jenkins Agents On Kubernetes
Now since Kubernetes works off of containerd I'll be taking a different approach on handling container builds by using nerdctl and the buildkit that comes bundled with it. I'll do this on the amd64 control plane node since it's beefier than my Raspberry Pi workers for handling builds and build related services. Go ahead and download and unpack the latest nerdctl release as of writing (make sure to check the release page in case there's a new one):
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Going through a Kubernetes training with autogenerated captions and about half are coming up like this.
That's why nerdctl, their cli binary, is so well named.
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A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
www.influxdata.com | 15 May 2025
Stats
Basic nerdctl repo stats
38
8,840
9.9
2 days ago
containerd/nerdctl is an open source project licensed under Apache License 2.0 which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of nerdctl is Go.
Sponsored
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com