This is a feature release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.
You can read the announcement post on the SUSE Community site.
Highlighted Features
- Docker CLI / Moby / dockerd: When you first run Rancher Desktop, you will have the option to pick your container runtime. Alongside
containerd, you can choosemoby, which providesdockerdand enables the Docker CLI and tools that communicate with the Docker socket via Rancher Desktop. You can later change the container runtime in the Kubernetes Settings. Only one container runtime will function at a time. - Apple Silicon (M1) Support: Rancher Desktop can now be installed on Apple Silicon (M1). In the downloads, choose the aarch64 version to get Apple Silicon support. Note: this version does require Rosetta 2 as some of the components needed by Rancher Desktop don’t yet have native builds.
- Linux Repositories: Linux RPM and deb packages are now available via package repositories. These can be using for installation and updates. Rancher Desktop is also available as an AppImage.
- macOS Bridged Networking: Networking has changes on Mac to enable the IP address to the virtual machine to be routable. This occurs via a bridged network.
- nerdctl Updates: nerdctl, the CLI for use with
containerd, has added many new features. Rancher Desktop ships the latest version.
Important Notes
- Switching between container runtimes will leave you with a fresh environment. Containers and images you have running under one container runtime will not show up under the other one. If you switch back to a previous runtime the images you previously had, there will still be available. If you want to remove the containers and images from your unused runtime you will need to Reset Kubernetes and the container runtime.
- Apple Silicon builds of Rancher Desktop run Kubernetes and handle containers using an aarch64 (ARM) architecture.
- AppImage Linux builds do not have a built-in update support. This is in development.
You can connect with the developers via:
- The issue queue
- Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel
Changelog
The full version changelog, from v0.6.1, can be found using GitHub compare.