Kafka, Linux/Docker and IntelliJ on Windows10

Question

I'm going down the 100DaysKafka path. It appears that the Confluent platform only runs on Linux via Docker. I do my Java development using IntelliJ and Windows 10. Is this a dead-end waste of time or can IntelliJ hook into the running Linux Kafka instance? Thanks!

Answer 1

via Docker

This is false. Confluent Platform doesn't support Windows, meaning some tools like the Schema Registry and KSQL and Control Center don't offer startup scripts for Windows.

Doesn't mean it's not possible to run Kafka or Zookeeper, which sounds like all you want. - How to install Kafka on Windows?

You don't need Intellij to "hook into" anything. That's also not really proper terminology unless you are planning on actually contributing to the Kafka source code. If you're just writing a client, it makes a TCP connection, which works fine over localhost.