Ben De St Paer-Gotch

Author Archives: Ben De St Paer-Gotch

Docker Desktop for Windows Home is here!

Last year we announced that Docker had released a preview of Docker Desktop with WSL 2 integration. We are now pleased to announce that we have completed the work to enable experimental support for Windows Home WSL 2 integration. This means that Windows Insider users on 19040 or higher can now install and use Docker Desktop!

Feedback on this first version of Docker Desktop for Windows Home is welcomed! To get started, you will need to be on Windows Insider Preview build 19040 or higher and install the Docker Desktop Edge 2.2.2.0.

What’s in Docker Desktop for Windows Home?

Docker Desktop for WSL 2 Windows Home is a full version of Docker Desktop for Linux container development. It comes with the same feature set as our existing Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend. This gives you: 

  • Latest version of Docker on your Windows machine 
  • Install Kubernetes in one click on Windows Home 
  • Integrated UI to view/manage your running containers 
  • Start Docker Desktop in <5 seconds
  • Use Linux Workspaces
  • Dynamic resource/memory allocation 
  • Networking stack, support for http proxy settings, and trusted CA synchronization 

How do I get started developing with Docker Desktop? 

For the best experience of developing Continue reading

Docker Desktop release 2.2 is here!

We are excited to announce that we released a new Docker Desktop version today! Thanks to the user feedback on the new features initially released in the Edge channel, we are now ready to publish them into Stable. 

Before getting to each feature into detail, let’s see what’s new in Docker Desktop 2.2:

  • WSL 2 as a technical preview, allowing access to the full system resources, improved boot time, access to Linux workspaces and improved file system performance
  • A new file sharing implementation for Windows, improving the developer inner loop user experience
  • A New Integrated Desktop Dashboard, to see at once glance your local running containers and Compose applications, and easily manage them.

WSL 2 – New architecture 

Back in July we released on Edge the technical preview of Docker Desktop for WSL 2, where we included an experimental integration of Docker running on an existing user Linux distribution. We learnt from our experience and re-architected our solution (covered in Simon’s blog) . 

This new architecture for WSL 2 allows users to: 

  • Use Kubernetes on the WSL 2 backend
  • Work with just WSL 2/turn off the traditional HyperV VM while working with WSL 2
  • Continue Continue reading

Containers Today Recap: The Future of the Developer Journey

There was amazing attendance at Containers Today in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago. For those who were unable to make it, here is a quick overview of what I talked about at the event in my session around the future of the developer journey. 

Before we talk about what we think will change the journey, we need to think about why it changes. The fundamental goal of any change to the way of working for developers should be to reduce the number of boring, mundane and repetitive tasks that developers have to do or to allow them to reach new customers/solve new problems. Developers create amazing value for companies and provide solutions to customers’ real world problems. But if they are having to spend half of their time working out how to get things into the hands of their customers, then you are getting half the value.

Developer Evolution

The role of developers has changed a lot over the last ~40 years. Developers no longer deploy to mainframes or in house hardware, they don’t do waterfall deployments and not many of them write in machine code. Developers have to now think about web languages and ML, work in Continue reading

5 Things to Try with Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview

We are pleased to announce the availability of our Technical Preview of Docker Desktop for WSL 2! 

As a refresher, this preview makes use of the new Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) version that Microsoft recently made available on Windows insider fast ring. It has allowed us to provide improvements to file system sharing, boot time and access to some new features for Docker Desktop users. 

To do this we have changed quite a bit about how we interact with the operating system compared to Docker Desktop on Windows today: 

To learn more about the full feature set have a look at our previous blog:   Get Ready for Tech Preview of Docker Desktop for WSL 2  and  Docker WSL 2 – The Future of Docker Desktop for Windows.

Want to give it a go?

  1. Get setup on a Windows machine on the latest Windows Insider build. The first step for this is heading over to the Microsoft and getting set up as a Windows Insider: https://insider.windows.com/en-gb/getting-started/ 

  2. You’ll need to install the latest release branch (at least build version 18932) and you will then want to enable the WSL 2 feature in Windows: https://docs.microsoft. Continue reading
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