Docker Desktop is no longer available for free. People have to uninstall it if company didn't buy a commercial license.
However, docker-engine and docker-cli reminds free and open source.
Even though there is no option to download docker-cli only official website, the docker-cli binary is available in its repository.
Download for Windows
Download for Linux
Download for macOS
Docker Desktop actually install two components for you:
unix:///var/run/docker.sock
unix:///var/run/docker.sock
.Docker supports opening service at TCP protocol. So you can use this feature to run command in local machine and connect to a remote dockerd service,
such as remote development server, a Linux VM, or WSL.
You can either:
/etc/docker/daemon.json
:{"hosts": ["tcp://0.0.0.0:2375", "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"]}
/usr/bin/dockerd -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2375 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock ...
note: dockerd will fail to start up if you set -H argument and hosts in daemon.json simultaneously.
You can set environment variable "DOCKER_HOST" as "tcp://0.0.0.0:2375", to tell docker-cli where to connect.