- On Mac & Windows, you can just install [Docker Desktop](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop)
- On Linux, you need to install [Docker Server](https://docs.docker.com/install/#server) and [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/) separately
The most current Polar downloads for Mac, Windows & Linux can be found in the [GitHub releases](https://github.com/jamaljsr/polar/releases)
## Polar's Future
The overall goal of Polar is to minimize the time & effort needed for a developer new to Lightning to get started building their next killer app. In addition, Polar aims to be a useful tool for experienced Lightning App developers to iterate faster on their projects. Less time setting up nodes, more time building your app.
Here's a short list of ideas for features that may be beneficial to add in future releases (in no particular order):
- Network snapshots with the ability to import/export them. These could also be used as templates to quickly boot up a network with predefined nodes and channels. The templates could be hosted github to allow community contributions. This may require a scripting system built-in.
- Sample app projects/code in different languages (Python, Typescript/JS, Go, C#) showing how to connect to the Lightning/Bitcoin nodes from an external app.
- Bitcoin Block Explorer & GRPC/REST API Explorers to have access to all of the node RPC API's graphically, without needing to fallback to the Terminal.
- A branded website with download links and getting started guides to make Polar a bit easier to find via search engines
Huge thanks to maintainers of [Lightning Joule](https://github.com/joule-labs/joule-extension), [Zap Wallet](https://github.com/LN-Zap/zap-desktop), [LND](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd), [Bitcoin Core](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin), along with many others for the amazing apps & libraries that gave this project inspiration, ideas & sometimes even a little code 😊.
I plan to setup a website and email soon. The best place to reach me now is on Twitter @jamaljsr. I also lurk in the LND Slack server, so you can msg me there as well.