WSL

This tutorial helps you to use Docker via WSL2 on Windows, without Docker Desktop. It was done using WSL Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Installing WSL

First of all, install WSL. It could be done using Microsoft Store.

Then check your WSL installed distros:

wsl --list --verbose

Set WSL 2 version for the distro you want to use, replacing <Distro>. It won't work on version 1. Use the following command for that:

wsl --set-version <Distro> 2

First install the following packages:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg2

Then install Docker packages:

sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Add proper user group configs:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Configure dockerd:

DOCKER_DIR=/mnt/wsl/shared-docker
mkdir -pm o=,ug=rwx "$DOCKER_DIR"
sudo chgrp docker "$DOCKER_DIR"
sudo mkdir /etc/docker

Finally, run dockerd to initialize Docker: sudo dockerd

Download docker-compose using cUrl. Replace 2.5.0 to the release you want to install.

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/2.5.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Add permissions to docker-compose binary:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose