Hi! Question in the title.
I get that its super easy to setup. But its really worthwhile to have something that:
- runs everything as root (not many well built images with proper useranagement it seems)
- you cannot really know which stuff is in the images: you must trust who built it
- lots of mess in the system (mounts, fake networks, rules…)
I always host on bare metal when I can, but sometimes (immich, I look at you!) Seems almost impossible.
I get docker in a work environment, but on self hosted? Is it really worth while? I would like to hear your opinions fellow hosters.
Others have addressed the root and trust questions, so I thought I’d mention the “mess” question:
Even the messiest bowl of ravioli is easier to untangle than a bowl of spaghetti.
The mounts/networks/rules and such aren’t “mess”, they are isolation. They’re commoditization. They’re abstraction - Ways to tell whatever is running in the container what it wants to hear, so that you can treat the container as a “black box” that solves the problem you want solved.
Think of Docker containers less like pets and more like cattle, and it very quickly justifies a lot of that stuff because it makes the container disposable, even if the data it’s handling isn’t.
I ended up using Docker to set up pict-rs and y’all are making me happy I did