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Docker is also a company that sells 3 of these as a product. What's interesting is that for those 3 there are often better versions. Docker Engine is not used

Docker is also a company that sells 3 of these as a product. What's interesting is that for those 3 there are often better versions. Docker Engine is not used in a number of popular examples – GCP for example uses their own engine if I remember correctly. There are other pluggable runtimes. The Docker desktop app isn't great, and is now expensive, compared to a number of cheaper or free or open source alternatives. And Docker Hub is basically just for free public publishing, as Docker registries are so commoditised. I've always felt that the best bit of Docker is the file format and the UX around that. But that's not something Docker-the-company has managed to monetise.

vbezhenar 3y ago
Docker engine uses containerd to run containers. Containerd was born from Docker company. Containerd is probably the most popular runtime for Kubernetes. GKE uses containerd as well. Docker hub is absolutely the most popular registry for open source software and configured as default address for kubernetes. Nothing of it is irreplaceable for sure. But Docker made a big contribution to container world, regardless.
Sankozi 3y ago
What are better alternatives to Docker desktop on Windows? I am using Rancher desktop and number of bugs and lack of features would make paying for Docker desktop worthwhile if I used it more than ~1 hour per week.
- dusanh 3y ago
  Maybe https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/ ? I haven't used it myself though, so I can't vouch for it.
  - oofta-boofta 3y ago
    [dead]
- crabbone 3y ago
  This is a weird question: why would you use anything like Docker Desktop to begin with? I didn't even know Docker Desktop existed until couple months ago. My wife works on MS Windows and she needed to run someone's project that was for some reason distributed in Docker images... She couldn't get Docker installed on Windows, but that's kind of expected as everything is kind of screwy there... so, I had to use Web search to figure out what is the way to do it (she did try to get Docker Desktop). I ended up configuring Hyper-V (solely because it comes bundled with the system) and installing Docker in some Arch VM I set up for that. I cannot claim that this is a "comfortable" setup, but given the overall bad UX of that OS and that Docker isn't designed to run on it from the start, I think it's an OK solution. I briefly tried opening the Docker Desktop GUI, and I just cannot understand why would anyone need that specific thing... it just seems to make everything worse at the baseline. You immediately miss the convenience of being able to feed the output it produces into grep / pager or to combine information extracted from one output with the input into another operation.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Lol, this is exactly where I'm at. I push others to do wsl2 + podman but I'm doing Hyper-v myself just because fighting cgroup and systemd stuff was quite annoying. Further, you get some really nice space saving with the btrfs driver.
  - jamesfinlayson 3y ago
    Maybe her work changed some settings in Windows? From a clean install of Windows I thought Docker Desktop installed fine for me but WSL2 needed me to change some setting.
    - crabbone 3y ago
      It was definitely not a clean Windows install. She inherited this laptop from someone else, and it wasn't well "cleaned up" (some previous user settings were still there). Also, the IT had put some restrictions on how Hyper-V could be used, I think, or maybe have pre-configured it somehow (most likely unintentionally, when configuring something else). The sort of problems it was having were related to virtualizing the network adapter. Somehow after about half an hour it would just "stop working". Since it's Windows... no debugging, no logs, and the Web search brings up a lot of nonsense when you try to figure out the problem. The kind of "stop working" was that the host could still use the adapter, but the guest system (the one running Docker) would still have an IP, knew the IP of the router... but sending anything to the outside world (i.e. the router) would end up lost. Maybe it was a faulty adapter. Maybe faulty Windows driver, or maybe a problem in Hyper-V / its settings... I never figured it out. The same problem existed if I tried to do it with any VM I'd create there, if I tried to virtualize the adapter, so it wasn't unique to Docker. Eventually, I've given up on the idea of having a virtualized adapter, and put the VM in its own NAT'ed network.
- cogman10 3y ago
  Podman in wsl2 works fairly well. However, there are some rough edges that you'll have to smooth out. (Such as setting up the docker host and fighting the podman socket stuff if you need it).
- maple3142 3y ago
  If you don't need to access `docker` command from Windows, just install docker using the same way you would install docker on a regular Linux in WSL2. (e.g. sudo apt install docker-ce, curl https://get.docker.sh/ https://get.docker.sh/)
- dominick-cc 3y ago
  I've heard good things about Podman https://podman.io https://podman.io
anewlanguage 3y ago
This is the correct view. Docker is a company selling some useful products, but the OCI (Open Container Initiative) format is what is interesting, and it can be used with many different tools not just Docker's.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  In fact, I would guess that there majority of OCI images aren't used with docker at all, but by kubernetes [directly] on containerd
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
I don't understand the need for Docker Desktop. When you install the docker-ce package, you get the docker client CLI and dockerd daemon managed as a systemd service. I have never seen anyone build or run images outside of the CLI. Why are people paying for a GUI wrapper?
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  Docker desktop creates and manages Linux VM with docker engine inside. It also does some magic to allow mounting host directories inside containers. I've yet to reproduce that magic, TBH. It's obviously important for macOS, because macOS does not support docker containers. While Windows supports docker containers, most docker containers are built for Linux, so Docker Desktop is important for Windows as well. Now for Linux you can run docker engine on the host, if you're proficient with Linux. However some people use Docker Desktop on Linux as well. I could imagine that you can run very old host Linux this way. I, personally, avoid docker desktop on macOS. Right now I'm using remote Linux VM and in the future I'll use Linux in VM, configured manually. However I've yet to find out how to mount host directories inside that VM containers. Some magic.
- jamesfinlayson 3y ago
  On Windows and Mac, Docker Desktop is the only way to install Docker. If you work for a big company that isn't using Linux then you need to pay just to use Docker.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    I've used docker on windows a lot and it never even occurred to me to install Docker Desktop. I just use normal docker inside of WSL since that's where I do all my actual work when I have to use windows. It pretty much works exactly like Linux from what I recall although I can't test it now because my windows machine is broken.
- benjaminwootton 3y ago
  Mainly Windows users, followed by OSX I suspect.

vbezhenar 3y ago

Docker engine uses containerd to run containers. Containerd was born from Docker company. Containerd is probably the most popular runtime for Kubernetes. GKE uses containerd as well. Docker hub is absolutely the most popular registry for open source software and configured as default address for kubernetes. Nothing of it is irreplaceable for sure. But Docker made a big contribution to container world, regardless.

Sankozi 3y ago

What are better alternatives to Docker desktop on Windows? I am using Rancher desktop and number of bugs and lack of features would make paying for Docker desktop worthwhile if I used it more than ~1 hour per week.

dusanh 3y ago
Maybe https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/ ? I haven't used it myself though, so I can't vouch for it.
- oofta-boofta 3y ago
  [dead]
crabbone 3y ago
This is a weird question: why would you use anything like Docker Desktop to begin with? I didn't even know Docker Desktop existed until couple months ago. My wife works on MS Windows and she needed to run someone's project that was for some reason distributed in Docker images... She couldn't get Docker installed on Windows, but that's kind of expected as everything is kind of screwy there... so, I had to use Web search to figure out what is the way to do it (she did try to get Docker Desktop). I ended up configuring Hyper-V (solely because it comes bundled with the system) and installing Docker in some Arch VM I set up for that. I cannot claim that this is a "comfortable" setup, but given the overall bad UX of that OS and that Docker isn't designed to run on it from the start, I think it's an OK solution. I briefly tried opening the Docker Desktop GUI, and I just cannot understand why would anyone need that specific thing... it just seems to make everything worse at the baseline. You immediately miss the convenience of being able to feed the output it produces into grep / pager or to combine information extracted from one output with the input into another operation.
- cogman10 3y ago
  Lol, this is exactly where I'm at. I push others to do wsl2 + podman but I'm doing Hyper-v myself just because fighting cgroup and systemd stuff was quite annoying. Further, you get some really nice space saving with the btrfs driver.
- jamesfinlayson 3y ago
  Maybe her work changed some settings in Windows? From a clean install of Windows I thought Docker Desktop installed fine for me but WSL2 needed me to change some setting.
  - crabbone 3y ago
    It was definitely not a clean Windows install. She inherited this laptop from someone else, and it wasn't well "cleaned up" (some previous user settings were still there). Also, the IT had put some restrictions on how Hyper-V could be used, I think, or maybe have pre-configured it somehow (most likely unintentionally, when configuring something else). The sort of problems it was having were related to virtualizing the network adapter. Somehow after about half an hour it would just "stop working". Since it's Windows... no debugging, no logs, and the Web search brings up a lot of nonsense when you try to figure out the problem. The kind of "stop working" was that the host could still use the adapter, but the guest system (the one running Docker) would still have an IP, knew the IP of the router... but sending anything to the outside world (i.e. the router) would end up lost. Maybe it was a faulty adapter. Maybe faulty Windows driver, or maybe a problem in Hyper-V / its settings... I never figured it out. The same problem existed if I tried to do it with any VM I'd create there, if I tried to virtualize the adapter, so it wasn't unique to Docker. Eventually, I've given up on the idea of having a virtualized adapter, and put the VM in its own NAT'ed network.
cogman10 3y ago
Podman in wsl2 works fairly well. However, there are some rough edges that you'll have to smooth out. (Such as setting up the docker host and fighting the podman socket stuff if you need it).
maple3142 3y ago
If you don't need to access `docker` command from Windows, just install docker using the same way you would install docker on a regular Linux in WSL2. (e.g. sudo apt install docker-ce, curl https://get.docker.sh/ https://get.docker.sh/)
dominick-cc 3y ago
I've heard good things about Podman https://podman.io https://podman.io

anewlanguage 3y ago

This is the correct view. Docker is a company selling some useful products, but the OCI (Open Container Initiative) format is what is interesting, and it can be used with many different tools not just Docker's.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
In fact, I would guess that there majority of OCI images aren't used with docker at all, but by kubernetes [directly] on containerd

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

I don't understand the need for Docker Desktop. When you install the docker-ce package, you get the docker client CLI and dockerd daemon managed as a systemd service. I have never seen anyone build or run images outside of the CLI. Why are people paying for a GUI wrapper?

vbezhenar 3y ago
Docker desktop creates and manages Linux VM with docker engine inside. It also does some magic to allow mounting host directories inside containers. I've yet to reproduce that magic, TBH. It's obviously important for macOS, because macOS does not support docker containers. While Windows supports docker containers, most docker containers are built for Linux, so Docker Desktop is important for Windows as well. Now for Linux you can run docker engine on the host, if you're proficient with Linux. However some people use Docker Desktop on Linux as well. I could imagine that you can run very old host Linux this way. I, personally, avoid docker desktop on macOS. Right now I'm using remote Linux VM and in the future I'll use Linux in VM, configured manually. However I've yet to find out how to mount host directories inside that VM containers. Some magic.
jamesfinlayson 3y ago
On Windows and Mac, Docker Desktop is the only way to install Docker. If you work for a big company that isn't using Linux then you need to pay just to use Docker.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  I've used docker on windows a lot and it never even occurred to me to install Docker Desktop. I just use normal docker inside of WSL since that's where I do all my actual work when I have to use windows. It pretty much works exactly like Linux from what I recall although I can't test it now because my windows machine is broken.
benjaminwootton 3y ago
Mainly Windows users, followed by OSX I suspect.