Actually Docker Swarm Mode is alive an well.
Prominent software like Traefik 2.x would not bother supporting it as a backend if it was dead.
So I would take your response with a grain of salt.
It would be a shame if the community let’s Docker Swarm Mode die.
Swarm Mode deployments are light-years faster that K8s and the learning curve is practically non-existent compared to K8s which requires development efforts like Rancher. Exceptional work thus far with Rancher but Swarm Mode is ideal for small to mid-size cluster, as I mentioned.
Yes the industry wants to steer the public in an entire new direction (K8s) but the reality is one can accomplish pretty much anything with Swarm Mode and Traefik; reverse proxy, load balancing, scaling workloads, etc…
One can even manage multiple Swarm Clusters using tools like SwarmPit and Portainer.
In any case, thanks for the conversation and effort around Rancher.
Respectfully,
Rod