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What's the deal with Docker?
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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This is exactly the answer.
I'd just expand on one thing: many systems have multiple apps that need to run at the same time. Each app has its own dependencies, sometimes requiring a specific version of a library.
In this situation, it's very easy for one app to need v1 of MyCleverLibrary (and fails with v2) and another needs v2 (and fails with v1). And then at the next OS update, the distro updates to v2.5 and breaks everything.
In this situation, before containers, you will be stuck, or have some difficult workrounds including different LD_LIBRARY_PATH settings that then break at the next update.
Using containers, each app has its own libraries at the correct and tested versions. These subtle interdependencies are eliminated and packages 'just work'.
I can also add that if you want to run multiple programs that each have a web interface it's easy to direct each interface to the port you want instead of having to go through various config files that are different for each program or worst case having to change a hardcoded port in some software. With docker you have the same easy config options for each service you want to run. Same with storage paths. Various software stores their files at seemingly random places. With docker you just map a folder and all you files are stored there without any further configs.
I approve of this expanded answer. I may have been too ELI5 in my post.
If the OP has read this far, I'm not telling you to use docker, but you could consider it if you want to store all of your services and their configurations in a backup somewhere on your network so if you have to set up a new raspberry pi for any reason, now it's a simple sequence of docker commands (or one docker-compose command) to get back up and running. You won't need to remember how to reinstall all of the dependencies.