Depending on what you're looking for, if it's just an environment to play around with, minikube is a good option: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube
And as another poster stated, kubeadm is a good way to get started on a VM or local system by following this guide: https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/independent/install-kubeadm...
And last, possibly not what you're looking for but worth mentioning, there are commercial options available such as gravitational telekube which includes among other features a way to consistently install kubernetes amongst different environments and providers https://gravitational.com/telekube/. *Please be aware though that I'm affiliated with gravitational and work on telekube
In Letter to Santa Kubekubernetes
minikube
Go2016–2022
kubernetes / minikube
minikube
Run Kubernetes locally
38Distinct people
50Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
32.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Run Kubernetes locally
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- kubernetes/kubernetes · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 11:19:25 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year50 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-06-20 19:58:12 UTC to 2022-06-23 06:20:02 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 21 | 1 | 20 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 2 | 8 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
minikube
minikube implements a local Kubernetes cluster on macOS, Linux, and Windows. minikube's primary goals are to be the best tool for local Kubernetes application development and to support all Kubernetes features that fit.
Features
minikube runs the latest stable release of Kubernetes, with support for standard Kubernetes features like:
LoadBalancer - using minikube tunnel
Multi-cluster - using minikube start -p <name>
NodePorts - using minikube service
Persistent Volumes
Dashboard - minikube dashboard
Container runtimes - minikube start --container-runtime
Configure apiserver and kubelet options via command-line flags
Supports common CI environments
As well as developer-friendly features:
Addons - a marketplace for developers to share configurations for running services on minikube
NVIDIA GPU support - for machine learning
AMD GPU support - for machine learning
Filesystem mounts
For more information, see the official minikube website
Installation
See the Getting Started Guide
📣 Please fill out our fast 5-question survey so that we can learn how & why you use minikube, and what improvements we should make. Thank you! 👯
GitHub Codespace
You can run minikube in a GitHub Codespace by clicking here:
This will launch a Github Codespace. You can then run minikube start and minikube dashboard - You can then open Minikube Dashboard by clicking opening the link displayed in the terminal.
You can also run Minikube in a Dev Container locally using your favorite IDE, for more information see Dev Containers https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/devcontainers/containers
Documentation
See https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/
More Examples
See minikube in action in the controls handbook
Governance
Kubernetes project is governed by a framework of principles, values, policies and processes to help our community and constituents towards our shared goals.
The Kubernetes Community is the launching point for learning about how we organize ourselves.
The Kubernetes Steering community repo is used by the Kubernetes Steering Committee, which oversees governance of the Kubernetes project.
Community
minikube is a Kubernetes #sig-cluster-lifecycle project.
#minikube on Kubernetes Slack - Live chat with minikube developers!
minikube-users mailing list
minikube-dev mailing list
Contributing
Development Roadmap
Join our community meetings:
Bi-weekly office hours, Mondays @ 11am PST
Triage Party
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
10 sourcesMinikube – run Kubernetes locally
3 points · Open discussionCertain things are not possible. However, we try to match functionality as much as possible with localkube (and soon kubeadm).
Shared folders, especially using 9p and/or cross-platform have been an issue, and I personally also experience this in the fork Minishift, and this likely the performance issue you meant.
But back to an earlier question I posted, have you filed the issues you had in the issue tracker? https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues
Yes, the docker/machine code is an issue. For this, the libmachine is mostly moved inrepo and we are working on abstracting and even replacing this.
In Adding Kubernetes support to the Docker platformWe have had a number of people want to replicate locally for offline use cases (train/plane), reduced bandwidth use cases (home/plane/train), and cost reasons (laptop VMs are always cheaper than cloud). If you like Vagrant and Kubernetes checkout the Tectonic Sandbox[1] or if you don't want to use vagrant checkout minikube[2]. We (CoreOS) invested time into both projects for these reasons.
[1]: https://coreos.com/tectonic/sandbox
[2]: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube
In Vagrant 2.0I'm coming from traditional VM's and want to play around with Kubernetes. What are the best guides/articles to get started with Kubernetes?
I've heard to start with https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube locally, but looking for a solid article to get familiar with all the concepts and best practices.
In Kubernetes 1.7 with Tim Hockin [audio]This question really doesn't belong here, as it's solved by basic searching, however look into https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube
In Ask HN: How to setup a k8s cluster with virtualbox VMsOther installers that minikube has:
- Arch linux AUR https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/minikube/
- Windows installer https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/download/v0....
- Deb package https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/download/v0....
In Container orchestration: Moving from fleet to Kubernetesbrew cask install minikube
brew install kubectl
Then follow the tutorial https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube#quickstart
In Container orchestration: Moving from fleet to KubernetesIf you want to get rid of docker-compose, you could try using minikube (https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube), which is a local Kubernetes deployment, similar to the desktop version of Docker. It works well and supports all major platforms.
In Ask HN: Docker, Kubernetes, Openshift, etc – how do you deploy your products?