# FreeHarbor

Windows · Desktop app · Windows Native

Docker Desktop charges a licence fee for what is, underneath, an open engine. FreeHarbor runs upstream Moby in a WSL2 distro it owns and exposes it on the docker_engine pipe your tools already look for, so nothing in your setup has to know it changed. One window, your containers, no subscription.

- Platform: Windows 10 2004 or later, 64-bit
- Licence: Apache-2.0
- Product site: https://alegauss.com/freeharbor/
- Download: https://github.com/alegauss/freeharbor/releases/latest
- Source: https://github.com/alegauss/freeharbor

Public numbers as of 2026-11-13: latest release v2.1.0 (2026-11-12).

## What comes next

From docs/ROADMAP.md at 2ca0432.

### Block A — The Windows engine (Docker without Docker Desktop)

- 🛠 Nothing notices a new Moby, CLI, Compose, Buildx or Alpine release, so the pins drift until someone looks

### Block F — Installer and distribution (free, Apache 2.0)

- 📋 winget install alegauss.FreeHarbor finds nothing while the first winget-pkgs pull request waits for moderators
- 📋 Every first download meets a SmartScreen warning, because the installer is not signed
- 📋 There is no MSIX package of FreeHarbor to sideload or submit
- 📋 A packaged copy would still offer its own self-update and run an Inno setup over a WindowsApps folder
- 📋 Inside a package, docker and freeharbor are not on PATH and DOCKER_CONFIG may land in the package's private hive
- 📋 Under a package, both Run values go to a private hive Explorer never reads, so nothing starts at sign-in
- 📋 Packaged, the docker-desktop:// link buildx prints opens nothing, because the HKCU handler is never registered
- 📋 A Store install has no page before the first file, so a machine without WSL2 finds out only after installing
- 📋 Uninstalling the package leaves the freeharbor distribution and its multi-gigabyte disk registered with WSL

### Block I — The site on the design system

- ⏳ The site keeps its own copy of the template that eight product sites share

## Recently shipped

- 2026-11-12 · DD349: The pins trail upstream: Moby and the CLI at 29.7.2, Compose 5.4.0, Buildx 0.36.1, Alpine 3.24.1
- 2026-11-12 · DD348: A reinstall keeps the distribution's Alpine packages at the release first imported, so its security patches never land
- 2026-11-12 · DD347: Edit details offers 16 Segoe MDL2 glyphs, too few to describe what a container or project is
- 2026-11-11 · DD345: The tray balloon says there is nothing to click while WSL itself is not answering
- 2026-11-11 · DD344: A hung WSL (HCS_E_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT) leaves the host retrying every 5 minutes with nothing offered that would fix it
- 2026-11-11 · DD343: A ping answered by wsl.exe's own UTF-16 error reads as the daemon replying, cut to one letter
- 2026-11-11 · DD336: The site pins the design system at 2026.3.23 while 2026.3.26 is published
- 2026-11-10 · DD342: A card's state words are left-aligned in their column, so running, failed and stopped end at different points

All entries: https://alegauss.com/changelog/freeharbor/