It’s a different conversation from the dev side and from the sysadmin side, and neither might apply to you. As a dev, containers allow you to care a lot less a

It’s a different conversation from the dev side and from the sysadmin side, and neither might apply to you. As a dev, containers allow you to care a lot less about what’s installed on the server and in which version. You’ve already solved that in a different way for your setup, which is fine. I’d say the trick in your case isn’t the DLLs specifically (I’m not sure why you focus on that aspect), it’s the fact that .NET allows you to create a standalone application, including (in modern times) the .NET runtime. If that’s all you need, you’ve already minimized your dependencies on the OS, and you’re unlikely to benefit from using containers. However, if you need anything else on the server (another runtime, a database server, a mail server), Docker could still help. Having the whole tech stack pinned in version control is really nice, and having the ability to make any changes to one’s setup at whim is very liberating. For admins, there’s a different advantage. Especially when multiple technologies are in use somewhere, containers are a standard interface to host any kind of server application the same way. You don’t need to know or care that one technology just copies a directory, the other one requires a specific configuration of Apache and the third one requires setting up an extra cron job — just start the container and you’re done. But it’s always important to remember that there’s no shame in not using a technology that HN has deemed cool, particularly if it doesn’t solve a problem you have.