The arguments for (and against) Docker are all over the web. It's useful in both cases; it's not clear to me what you mean by "actual benefits". You have preci

The arguments for (and against) Docker are all over the web. It's useful in both cases; it's not clear to me what you mean by "actual benefits". You have precise control over what's getting deployed and have almost zero reliance on anything on the deploy environment. If you have "install scripts" that do all of that then you're duplicating the efforts of Chef, Puppet, Docker, etc. that are probably (but not necessarily; benefit of the doubt and all that) better than your deploy scripts. You're also still at the mercy of the environment where those scripts are run.