I learned just yesterday that Docker Inc. is charging for their Docker Desktop client. Only when certain conditions apply, but still. I am not at all against charging for good products, but now I also understand why the docker app and website wanted me to log in lately. Good time to get rid of it and use the less annoying tools, I found colima as my new docker runtime, simple, easy, not in my way.

Uninstalling Docker Desktop

Actually uninstalling docker desktop is not a big deal. Even inside the app you have an "uninstall" button, that's nice. But then there is no docker deamon running anymore, and I always got the following error message:

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

Of course, I asked ChatGPT when old-style search engines results didn't help. But also there I did not really find things that solved my problem, I too often got the answer to run sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.docker.vmnetd.plist that did not make a difference. I even restarted my machine multiple times, which I rarely do. I tried minikube, I even followed the advice to install docker via brew install --cask docker, which just installs Docker Desktop again. Finally, it's not that easy to do it right if you are not that at home in the docker world, or I should better say container world.

The Solution

If you want to run docker without Docker Desktop on MacOS colima is the best replacement I found. In a reddit thread I came across lima for the first time, I didn't understand what to do with it after skimming the project site, but it sounded like what I need. And then I saw it: Colima: Docker on macOS with minimal setup. That is what I was looking for. And it was as easy as it should be:

> bew install colima
> colima start

All this took a while to install, but that also somehow made me understand that there is some OS stuff to do in order to run docker, sounds logical, so this must be good.

A docker version showed proper results, no docker deamon error anymore, and my docker-compose up command of my latest project also worked, the world looks good again. 🎉

German Podcast about the Container World

If you are interested in a podcast that explains docker, it's history and the layers below I can recommend th, unfortunately 🇩🇪-only, Engineering Kiosk Podcast and their episode(s) on Docker.