> Unsurprising, really. The usefulness of it cannot be overstated.
Furthermore, in addition to the points you mentioned, it also lets us:
- trivially remap ports to whatever we want (and expose whichever we'd like to the outside)
- easily set resource limits, so your instance of MariaDB doesn't bring the whole server down and make it unresponsive
- abstract away storage, in case you want a specific directory for your backups instead of following HFS (say, just have /app, treating the rest of the server as throwaway)
- perhaps most importantly, your host OS is now separate from the actual containers that you are running, updating/redeploying either becomes a breeze
Recently, I actually decided to build my own containers for all of my personal use cases and it's been an interesting experience: I base everything on a LTS version of Ubuntu and just use apt for getting all of the runtimes (Node, Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, ...) for my own software, and so far it's a nice experience.
All I need is the base Ubuntu image from Docker Hub and the rest is up to me and the regular mirrors/repositories for the software packages in question, most of which can be stored on my own Nexus instance as needed, as well as the whole build process is primarily driven through Gitea, Drone CI and a few "servers" (repurposed old computers with passive cooling) that I have on my desk.
Though for now I also use Bitnami images for databases and such, which are also decent and which I largely just cache on my end: https://bitnami.com/stacks/containers
So what I'm trying to say, is that there's a lot of flexibility that you can enjoy, both in making your own "templates" for web servers, programming languages, build toolchains etc., as well as you can grab pre-made stuff that other people have made, be it on Docker Hub, someone's Nexus/Artifactory/Harbor instance or another registry out there.
Docker and other OCI compatible tools have largely achieved the sort of adoption and widespread usage that projects like Nix and Guix could also benefit from.
Furthermore, in addition to the points you mentioned, it also lets us:
Recently, I actually decided to build my own containers for all of my personal use cases and it's been an interesting experience: I base everything on a LTS version of Ubuntu and just use apt for getting all of the runtimes (Node, Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, ...) for my own software, and so far it's a nice experience.All I need is the base Ubuntu image from Docker Hub and the rest is up to me and the regular mirrors/repositories for the software packages in question, most of which can be stored on my own Nexus instance as needed, as well as the whole build process is primarily driven through Gitea, Drone CI and a few "servers" (repurposed old computers with passive cooling) that I have on my desk.
Though for now I also use Bitnami images for databases and such, which are also decent and which I largely just cache on my end: https://bitnami.com/stacks/containers
So what I'm trying to say, is that there's a lot of flexibility that you can enjoy, both in making your own "templates" for web servers, programming languages, build toolchains etc., as well as you can grab pre-made stuff that other people have made, be it on Docker Hub, someone's Nexus/Artifactory/Harbor instance or another registry out there.
Docker and other OCI compatible tools have largely achieved the sort of adoption and widespread usage that projects like Nix and Guix could also benefit from.