ROS 2 Setup Guide

An exhaustive guide for installing a ROS 2 development environment

View project on GitHub

Home

Docker Desktop installation (Windows)

Table of Contents

install Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL2 backend.

Prerequisites

  • WSL version 1.1.3.0 or later (previously installed)

1. Docker Desktop installation

Download and install Docker Desktop for Windows from here

2. Install interactively

Install the Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend using the interactive installation:

  • Double-click Docker Desktop Installer.exe to run the installer.

  • Ensure the Use WSL 2 instead of Hyper-V option on the Configuration page is selected.

  • If your system only supports one of the two options, you will not be able to select which backend to use.

  • Follow the instructions on the installation wizard to authorize the installer and proceed with the install.

  • When the installation is successful, select Close to complete the installation process.

2.1 Additional steps for non-admin users

If your admin account is different to your user account, you must add the user to the docker-users group:

  • Run Computer Management as an administrator and navigate to Local Users and Groups > Groups > docker-users.
  • Right-click to add the user to the group.
  • Sign out and sign back in for the changes to take effect.

3. Configure Docker Desktop

  • Start Docker Desktop from the Windows Start menu.
  • Select Settings to configure Docker Desktop (the gear).

Docker Desktop Settings

  • Ensure that “Use the WSL 2 based engine” is checked in Settings > General, if not, check it and click Apply & Restart.

Docker Desktop Settings

Select from your installed WSL 2 distributions which you want to enable Docker integration on (Ubuntu-22.04 or Ubuntu) by going to: Settings > Resources > WSL Integration.

Docker Desktop Settings

Now docker commands work from Windows using the new WSL 2 engine.

To test it, open a Ubuntu terminal and run:

docker --version

Docker Desktop Settings

And run a test container:

docker run hello-world

Docker Desktop Settings

4. GPU support (optional)

GPU support is only available in Docker Desktop for Windows with the WSL2 backend.

With Docker Desktop version 3.1.0 and later, WSL 2 GPU Paravirtualization (GPU-PV) on NVIDIA GPUs is supported. To enable WSL 2 GPU Paravirtualization, you need:

  • A machine with an NVIDIA GPU
  • Beta drivers from NVIDIA supporting WSL 2 GPU Paravirtualization
  • Update WSL 2 Linux kernel to the latest version using wsl –update from an elevated command prompt
  • Make sure the WSL 2 backend is turned on in Docker Desktop

To validate that everything works as expected, run the following command to run a short benchmark on your GPU:

docker run --rm -it --gpus=all nvcr.io/nvidia/k8s/cuda-sample:nbody nbody -gpu -benchmark

The following displays after downloading the image and running the container:

Docker Desktop Settings

5. Next steps

Install VS Code and the Dev-Containers extensions to use Docker with VS Code, follow the instructions

6. References