Selfhosted

Recent video that explains Docker very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrNIzy6U_g

I started self-hosting a bit prior to when Docker took off, and getting multiple services running was much harder. Service A wants a certain version of PHP installed with certain plugins while Service B wants a different version. You'd follow a tutorial for installing Service C and desperately hope that it wouldn't somehow break Service A or B. You installed Service D for a bit despite all the installation pain and now want to uninstall it - I hope you tracked exactly what config changes you made throughout the system so you can undo it.

Docker fixed all of this by making each service independent through containers which made self-hosting 10x easier. I'd also add that I love how easy it is to transfer my setup to a new server - I keep all of my container volumes in a specific directory and my docker-compose files in another and that's all I need to backup / transfer. Without Docker you'd have to specifically handle each & every configuration file and database location, and if you later upgrade to a newer version of the OS or a different distro you'd have to handle possible conflicts between your versions and what the distro expects.

Docker of one version of software that uses Linux containers to encapsulate software and that software's dependencies, while limiting that software's access to the underlying OS. It's chroot, but for more of the system. It can make running software that has a lot of moving parts and dependencies easier. It can also improve your security running that software.

For how-tos, watch one of the 875,936 YouTube tutorials, or read one of the 3 million text tutorials. Or ask ChatGPT, if you really need hand-holding.

For your use case, consider it to be a packaging format (like AppImage, Flatpak, Deb, RPM, etc.) that includes all the dependencies (including services, not just libraries) for the app in question.

Should I change this?

If it's not broken don't fix it.

Use Podman (my preferred - the SystemD approach is awesome), containerd, or Incus. Docker is a graveyard of half-finished pet projects that have no reason for existing. Podman has a Docker-compatible socket, so 100% of Docker tooling will work with it.

Vs. LXD?

This blog post explains it well:

https://cosmicbyt.es/posts/demistifying-containers-part-1/

Essentially, containers are means of creating environments in which you can run software, and those environments are:

• isolated, which makes it a very controlled environment. Much harder to run into errors
• reproducible: we have tools that reproduce the same container from an image file
• easy to distribute: just have the container image.
• little to no compromises on performance (at least on Linux)

It is essentially a way for you to run a program without having to worry how to set up the environment, why it didn't work as expected, what dependencies you're missing, etc.

Install Portainer, it helps you get used to managing docker images and containers before going full command line.