Podman directly supports kubernetes manifest files without running a kubernetes instance. You can do: podman kube play --replace k8s.yaml podman kube d

Podman directly supports kubernetes manifest files without running a kubernetes instance. You can do: podman kube play --replace k8s.yaml podman kube down k8s.yaml podman kube apply --namespace project -f k8s.yaml I'm not familiar with Docker Desktop so maybe that just works there too.