Docker Desktop costs money now. Your Windows box already has the engine.
Since 2021, Docker Desktop has needed a paid subscription at companies past a certain size. A lot of developers have been told to stop using it, and the honest replacement list is shorter than it looks. Here is the thing that took me embarrassingly long to internalize: the engine was never the licensed part. dockerd is Apache-2.0. It runs perfectly well in WSL2. What Docker Desktop sells you is…
Since 2021, Docker Desktop required a paid subscription for businesses over a certain size. Many developers were told to stop using it, and there are limited alternatives. The truth is that the engine, dockerd, is open-source (Apache-2.0) and can run well in WSL2. Docker Desktop sells the GUI, VM management, update channel, and support apart from the engine.
If you don't want those features, the work required is easier than it looks. You just need the engine in a distro and to serve its API on \.\pipe\docker_engine — the pipe docker.exe already communicates with. Skrog is a solution that doesn't have Electron, Kubernetes, or a tray icon. Installing it once allows docker ps to work forever.
Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) is a VM that disappears when sleeping or resuming, and the engine can crash if not managed properly. Microsoft now offers a container runtime in WSL 2.9.3+, but it cannot be accessed as it's started without the required flags. Docker API cannot reach it, and only Skrog can serve its endpoint.
Benchmarks show Skrog with the engine on vsock transport being faster than the Microsoft shipped dockerd. Named volumes also favor Skrog, while published ports show a slight advantage for the Microsoft runtime. Memory usage favors Skrog as well, with an overall smaller working set.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
