This is the 2.0.0-alpha.1 release of Rancher Desktop 2.0, the first public preview of a ground-up
rewrite of Rancher Desktop for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
This is an early alpha, acting as a tech preview for a rewrite of 1.x. Therefore things may be a
little rough and different than what you've been used to, so this is not meant for production
uses. It also has no upgrade path between previews so when there's a new version, you will need
to uninstall and reinstall. It can be installed alongside Rancher Desktop 1.x without touching
the previous version. For what 2.0 is, how it differs, and how to try it, start with the blog:
- Welcome to Rancher Desktop 2.0
- Installing and Running Rancher Desktop 2.0
Please take the time to read through those posts on that blog and subscribe to the RSS for updates.
What's in this alpha
- One shared backend: rdd (the Rancher Desktop Daemon), across macOS, Windows and Linux, which is
built on Lima.
- Run it with or without the GUI. The daemon exposes a Kubernetes API that your existing tools can
drive.
- Build and run containers with the Docker (moby) engine.
- Optional Kubernetes (1.31 or newer) that can be enabled from the command line.
- A built-in dashboard for containers, images and volumes.
- The guest VM which runs openSUSE Leap.
Known limitations
- moby is the only container engine.
- There is no settings screen yet; you can enable Kubernetes from the command line.
- There is no upgrade path between previews: each new build is a clean slate.
- GPU support is not built yet.
- This is alpha software. Expect rough edges and please tell us what breaks.
Connect with the developers
- GitHub Discussions for questions and feedback, including comments on the blog posts
- Issue queue for bug reports and feature requests
- Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel
