[paulmd]

your question is confusing, docker-desktop is a gui utility. rancher-desktop is the equivalent to that.

if you don't want a command line, docker itself (the underlying utility that the docker-desktop GUI drives) is free, in contrast to the GUI portion. Or kubernetes.

so the direct answer is "brew install docker".

[paxys]

Nope, none of this is correct. Docker only runs on Linux. The core purpose of Docker Desktop (and similar tools) is to spin up a Linux VM under the hood and manage its lifecycle, route network calls, share volumes etc. You can do all of this yourself of course, but it will be a non-trivial amount of effort to set it up.

"brew install docker" is just another way to install Docker Desktop. It does not run Docker natively on MacOS, because that is impossible.

[paulmd]

> "brew install docker" is just another way to install Docker Desktop.

No, it's not! that would be "brew install homebrew/cask/docker". As you can see here!

https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/docker

This is the docker CLI utility, ie "brew install docker" which is what I said:

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/docker

Again, please actually look at the commands you are referencing before spreading misinformation, you are confidently incorrect and being rude about it.

Not only that but the information you are providing has legal implications because these two (completely different!) pieces of software have different licensing... docker-desktop is commercial license, not open-source!

You clearly do not understand the distinction here between the docker CLI utility and backend, and the docker GUI application, and it's very important here.

rancher-desktop is the equivalent to docker-desktop, ie the commercial portion, and docker itself can be used freely because it is (as I said) open source.

[ahepp]

similarly, `brew install podman` will install something a lot like Docker Desktop