Intro to Docker

What is docker? For that matter what is a container? Find out here.

What is Docker?

Docker is a container runtime, ultimately run on containerd. Docker is a packaged and more user friendly version with a graphical interface as well as a command line interface suite. Although it has many challengers and potential usurpers, docker remains the go-to tool for containers.

What is a container?

An oversimplification is that a container can be thought of as a much smaller VM. In general VM's require virtualization at the hardware level, hosts an entire OS complete with it's own kernel. A container on the other hand can share resources with it's hosts, leverages user-space a bit better, and can often run only what is necessary for the application. Ultimately, a container is more portable, and consistent than a VM and helps to eliminate the "it worked on my machine" issue.

How do I learn to use Docker containers?

First you'll need to install docker to ensure docker has installed properly you can run your first container with.

docker run -d -p 80:80 docker/getting-started

This will take you through the official guide for docker, and truthfully it's a great tool! It should be accessible via localhost in your browser.

What is a command?