Install minikube with WSL2 on Windows

Minikube is a tool that runs a local Kubernetes cluster on your development machine. This guide sets it up on WSL2.

Windows Preparation

Enable WSL and Virtual Machine Platform (run PowerShell as Administrator):

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

Set WSL default version to 2:

wsl --set-default-version 2

Configure WSL resource limits by editing $env:USERPROFILE\.wslconfig:

[wsl2]
memory=4GB
processors=2
swap=2GB

Install Ubuntu:

wsl --install Ubuntu-24.04

Note: Ensure hypervisor functionality is enabled in your BIOS before proceeding.

Install Docker Engine (inside WSL2)

Set up Docker’s apt repository:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ca-certificates curl gpg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Install Docker:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Configure Docker to run without root privileges:

sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
su - ${USER}
sudo service docker start

Install minikube

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube_latest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i minikube_latest_amd64.deb

Configure the Cluster

Use Docker as the driver and allocate all available resources:

minikube config set driver docker
minikube config set cpus max
minikube config set memory max

Verify configuration:

minikube config get driver
minikube config get cpus
minikube config get memory

Start minikube:

minikube start

Have fun with minikube!