rancher-desktop vs docker-desktop

rancher-desktop uses containerd as its container runtime by default, even docker-desktop uses containerd!
however, it provides a compatible docker api meaning we can use the standard docker cli to interact with rancher’s container management
to use docker cli set container engine as dockerd (moby) in settings
the point to note is DOCKER_HOST env should point to Rancher’s docker socket.

docker context ls # list contexts and the current one
docker context use rancher-desktop # switch context to rancher desktop

if docker desktop is installed on the system, it might be claiming the docker socket which rancher might want to use, this can lead to problems where the docker commands are directed to docker desktop instead of rancher desktop, so make sure to be in the correct context!

both use containerd as container runtime engine but rancher does not run the full docker engine, instead it provides a docker compatible api layer through cli-nerdctl
docker-desktop includes its own distribution of k8s, but rancher lets us use multiple distributions - k3s and also lets us configure and manage diff k8s versions
docker-desktop has commercial license however rancher is fully open-source
rancher with k3s is much more lightweight than docker-desktop

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