Setup Rancher Desktop without admin rights

RancherDesktopSetup.md

Setup Rancher Desktop without admin rights

Setup

1. Install WSL from Microsoft Store

2. Update to WSL2

   wsl --install
   wsl --set-version 2

3. In Powershell, install scoop:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser # Optional: Needed to run a remote script the first time
   irm get.scoop.sh | iex

4. In Powershell, install Rancher-Desktop:

   scoop install rancher-desktop

5. If above command is not working

   scoop bucket add extras
   scoop install extras/rancher-desktop

6. Read carefully and follow the post-install instructions from the terminal.

7. Open Rancher Desktop

How to limit resources usage

WSL use too much RAM or CPU. It can be useful to limit them on devices with a limited amount of RAM or CPU. To do that, follow the instructions below to limit to 2GB of RAM and 2 processors (you can adjust the numbers):

1. Inside your user folder (C:\Users\<UserName>), create a file .wslconfig.

2. To limit the resource usage of WSL2, in .wslconfig add the following:

   [wsl2]
   memory=2GB
   processors=2