What's the deal with Docker?

AlexPewMaster@lemmy.zip to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 152 points –

I never understood how to use Docker, what makes it so special? I would really like to use it on my Rapsberry Pi 3 Model B+ to ease the setup process of selfhosting different things.

I'm currently running these things without Docker:

  • Mumble server with a Discord bridge and a music bot
  • Maubot, a plugin-based Matrix bot
  • FTP server
  • Two Discord Music bots

All of these things are running as systemd services in the background. Should I change this? A lot of the things I'm hosting offer Docker images.

It would also be great if someone could give me a quick-start guide for Docker. Thanks in advance!

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For your use case, consider it to be a packaging format (like AppImage, Flatpak, Deb, RPM, etc.) that includes all the dependencies (including services, not just libraries) for the app in question.

Should I change this?

If it's not broken don't fix it.

Use Podman (my preferred - the SystemD approach is awesome), containerd, or Incus. Docker is a graveyard of half-finished pet projects that have no reason for existing. Podman has a Docker-compatible socket, so 100% of Docker tooling will work with it.

I can add, podman was ignored in previous years at my day job because there were some reliability issues either with GPU access or networking I forget, however these issues have been resolved and we're reimplementing it pretty much effortlessly

Yep, we're reconsidering it at work as well. it's grown pretty nicely