Install and Use Minikube in Linux

Kubernetes is a well-known container orchestration platform that allows you to manage containers from deployment to scaling and automation. It is also known as K8s as an abbreviation.

For beginners, getting started with Kubernetes can be a bit confusing, as you need a server to start applying Kubernetes commands and learning more. For this, we have a tool called Minikube.

What is Minikube?

Minikube is a local Kubernetes tool developed by Google in 2016, and it is the most convenient way to start a Kubernetes cluster. It is easy to install and use, and it has almost all of Kubernetes' features and functionality. When it comes to learning or testing environments, Minikube leads the whole process of local development because it is easy to set up and use.

In this article, we will go through how we can install and use Kubernetes on Linux to start applying what you learn from Kubernetes.

Install Minikube

Before installing Minikube, you need to have a driver installed on your machine. It could be Docker or any other driver there are a bunch of options if you don't want to use Docker. You can find the list of options on the official website.

Kubernetes itself needs to be installed in a Linux environment. So, if you are a Windows or Mac user, you don't have a Linux environment by default. Therefore, Minikube creates a virtual Linux environment for you by using either a virtual machine or a container. This is why you need virtualization technology installed on your machine before using Minikube.

To install Minikube on Debian / Ubuntu / Mint

First, if you don't have Docker or don't want to use it, you can use VirtualBox or any other technology of your choice.

To install VirtualBox

sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https virtualbox

This will install VirtualBox and the necessary packages.

To download and install Minikube, use the following command ?

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

This will first download the executable file using the tool curl. If you don't have curl installed, then install it first. The second command will install the .deb package on your system.

To install it on Fedora/Red Hat ?

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm

After the installation is completed, you can check the installed version using the command minikube version.

Now that you have installed Minikube, you are ready to use it.

Next, to start Minikube, you need to run the command ?

minikube start

If you don't specify any configuration, Minikube will try to make the best configuration based on your system resources and installed software.

After the setup is completed, you should be able to start and deploy your containers and manage them locally.

Conclusion

There are many ways to run Kubernetes locally on your machine, but the best choice is Minikube as it's easy to install and use. In this article, we explained how to set up Minikube on Linux.