Install Minikube on Windows 11

I have been struggling in installing a “minilab for k8s” envinronment on a Linux Machine.

Today, among some calls, I tried to install Minikube on my Windows 11 machine, and I suceeded. It was not as easy, so I’m writing down the steps I followed, hoping not to forget any of them.

First of all I installed Minikube choosing this option:

Installation went fine, but it did not start: it was missing the Driver, in brief it’s a container engine. OK let’s choose Docker. Oh, it says it needs WSL (linux on windows). Ok, install WSL first, from an Administrator terminal window issue the command

wsl --install        

and follow the ‘wizard’,

reboot, and set user/pass for linux on windows

now it’s time to install Docker. As I’m a winget addict i did

winget install docker        

Now it’s time to close and reopen administrator’s terminal. It’s a good idea to add the docker directory to the environment’s variable PATH. I launched

sysdm.cpl        

Then, I had to launch Docker Desktop as an Administrator

answer the usual “first run questions”, and start the Docker Desktop Service

Finally, from a newly opened terminal windows launched as Administrator, I issued the commands

docker context use default
minikube config set driver docker
minikube start        

and…

pay attention, you should use the command

minikube kubectl -- get po -A        

to be sure to be using the appropriate version of kubectl. On my pc the version installed (from Docker) is slightly different

N.B.: if you are going to install something that will use the kubectl command (like Veeam Kasten K10) this could cause issues: it’s better to be sure the kubectl version is the best one to interact with Minikube (I guess “same version or higher” as usual.

I hope I did not forget anything and it helps!