---
title: Setup a Local Computer
overview: Set up your local computer for the tutorial.
weight: 3
---

{{< boilerplate work-in-progress >}}

In this module you prepare your local computer for the tutorial.

1.  On your local computer, create an environment variable to store the name
    of the namespace used when you run the tutorial commands.
    You can use any name, for example `tutorial`.

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ export NAMESPACE=tutorial
    {{< /text >}}

1.  On your local computer, locate the `${NAMESPACE}-user-config.yaml` file you
    created earlier in the tutorial, where `${NAMESPACE}` is the name of your
    namespace. For example `tutorial-user-config.yaml`.

1.  Install [`curl`](https://curl.haxx.se/download.html).

1.  Install [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/download/).

1.  Install [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/install/).

1.  Install [`kubectl`](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/).

1.  Set the `KUBECONFIG` environment variable for the `${NAMESPACE}-user-config.yaml`
    configuration file:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ export KUBECONFIG=./${NAMESPACE}-user-config.yaml
    {{< /text >}}

1.  Verify that the configuration took effect by printing the current namespace:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ kubectl config view -o jsonpath="{.contexts[?(@.name==\"$(kubectl config current-context)\")].context.namespace}"
    tutorial
    {{< /text >}}

    You should see the name of your namespace in the output.

1.  Download one of the [Istio release archives](https://github.com/istio/istio/releases) and extract
    the `istioctl` command line tool from the `bin` directory, and verify that you
    can run `istioctl` with the following command:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ istioctl version
    version.BuildInfo{Version:"release-1.1-20190214-09-16", GitRevision:"6113e155ac85e2485e30dfea2b80fd97afd3130a", User:"root", Host:"4496ae63-3039-11e9-86e9-0a580a2c0304", GolangVersion:"go1.10.4", DockerHub:"gcr.io/istio-release", BuildStatus:"Clean", GitTag:"1.1.0-snapshot.6-6-g6113e15"}
    {{< /text >}}

Congratulations, you configured your local computer!

You are ready to [run a single service locally](/docs/examples/microservices-istio/single/).