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I don't like Docker or Podman

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Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#81

Post by sunshowers »

mardifoufs wrote: post #77
sunshowers wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unnecessary complexity makes debugging and understanding the system much harder. This is particularly common with CLI tools written in some languages. I was looking at Antora the other day (not intending to single this project out, it's just the one that came to mind). I found two ways to run it: 1. By installing Node: https://docs.antora.org/antora/latest/install-and-run-quicks... 2. By running it in a Docker contai…

It's just "complexity" if you aren't super comfortable with docker.. it's super easy to do everything you describe with docker. Like for me it's much easier to debug in a self contained system, because even a binary can have issues with dynamic linking, etc. So for me the complexity is reversed. I don't want to pollute my actual machine with stuff when a docker container is just as easy to use. I don't want my distro…

Well, distributing CLI tools as Docker images came about in part due to environments like Node, which made it harder to ship a single statically linked binary.

Imagine, like, your source control tool being shipped as a Docker container.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#82

Post by thiht »

nunez wrote: post #74

> Docker is very popular software to build Linux container images and running software in them. I don’t like it. > Podman is a re-implementation of the concept, command line interface, and file formats that is very close to identical to Docker. I don’t like that either. > I’ve used *systemd-nspawn* fairly extensively to run things in containers. It’s a much simpler container system than Docker, and I do not find it o…

I tried using systemd-nspawn as an alternative to Docker (not because I don't like Docker, but because trying alternatives is cool) a few years ago and I failed miserably. The docs were hard to grasp and at the time the concepts of namespaces and cgroups were a bit obscure. I guess there are more docs and blog articles making use of systemd-nspawn nowadays, I'll have to look into it.

This showed me how great and easy and well designed Docker was as an abstraction layer though. I know purists don't like it, but it made reliable deployments standard and easier than the alternative of not using Docker.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#83

Post by wink »

noodlesUK wrote: post #48
Uehreka wrote: post #37

So here's the thing: Docker is the best way we have to document how to set up a project/application in a way that can be repeated on arbitrary computers. The alternative was "have a README where you list all of the things you need to do/install in order to get this project running". That failed. Miserably. Developers always assumed things like "well naturally, if you're playing in the XYZ space, you've already got me…

I think for the development story, we had vagrant in the 2010s which IMO provided a much better experience for developers to set up reproducible dev environments. Docker excels at bundling up all the dependencies of a piece of software for deployment. Devcontainers definitely work these days, but I miss vagrant.

I disagree completely. Vagrant worked for your org or your setup but people hardly ever (in my experience) delivered the recipe, or the steps to setup.

Yes, sometimes the vagrant-configure thing had a few lines, but most people shipped an iso with stuff installed. It could have been done, but wasn't being done.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#84

Post by wink »

wesselbindt wrote: post #23
Pooge wrote: post #10

> The command line interface is really badly designed. It’s ugly, hard to learn, difficult to remember, illogical, inconsistent, and just makes no sense to me at all. I wonder if the author could elaborate here.

I wish they would elaborate a bit more on each single point. I'm quite happy about docker, so I'm especially interested when someone has a negative opinion about it. But here I feel like there's no meat to this article.

I kinda disagree about most of the points (but I don't love a lot of things about Docker, but don't see them being worse than other tools) - but I 100% agree on the networking.

It's kinda badly described and unintuitive. The amount of people who were surprised by the firewall rules messing up their existing firewall setup is very high. And it also just grabs a subnet and you have to dig why it would use that one and not another. Not sure about conflicts. But it's a bit of "it works until it doesn't".

I didn't have many "wtf just happened?" moments with docker, but 100% of them were network-related and half of them were hard to troubleshoot.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#85

Post by wink »

zzzeek wrote: post #17

> I prefer to use virtual machines...They also behave more like a real Linux system running on bare metal hardware than containers do. People don't seem to be noting this here yet but if this is why you "prefer" a VM to a container, you dont really understand what containers are used for

People use containers for different things, some of them for the same things they used VMs in the past. This has nothing to do with understanding, just your or the author's preference.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#86

Post by Pooge »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #63
Pooge wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the examples. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've never used those commands... I'd rather write `docker container ls` than an obscure short-hand alias.

Funny enough, ls is short for list :)

Very true, but it's a well-known command so I wouldn't qualify it as obscure! At this point everyone expects `ls` to display a list of something.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#87

Post by TheChaplain »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #9

1. I got hurt by Docker. 2. I don't want to learn Docker. 3. I got hurt by Docker more. 4. I don't trust DockerHub. 5. Podman is just like Docker. 6. I prefer VMs because I understand them, even though I know they are slower. 7. Don't try to explain Docker to me. A rant, nothing to see here, move along.

I think the community would be better off if you had a less condescending attitude and let people themselves decide if the submission is interesting or not.

If you don't like the submission then downvote and carry on.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#88

Post by mardifoufs »

sunshowers wrote: post #81
mardifoufs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just "complexity" if you aren't super comfortable with docker.. it's super easy to do everything you describe with docker. Like for me it's much easier to debug in a self contained system, because even a binary can have issues with dynamic linking, etc. So for me the complexity is reversed. I don't want to pollute my actual machine with stuff when a docker container is just as easy to use. I don't want my distro…

Well, distributing CLI tools as Docker images came about in part due to environments like Node, which made it harder to ship a single statically linked binary. Imagine, like, your source control tool being shipped as a Docker container.

I agree yes, CLI tools should not come in docker packages. I'd also blame python for that, it's harder to package.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely would love for everything to just be statically linked and packaged in a single binary (an approach that works great on windows usually). And you are right that "over using" docker is kind of a trend, but I think it's due to a problem (packaging apps in Linux) rather than being a problem by itself.

Re: I don't like Docker or Podman

#90

Post by zelifcam »

dgreensp wrote: post #50

I had to use Docker at a job or two, I think around 2018. I hated it. One class of issue: It made interacting with the file system slower, sometimes by orders of magnitude. Stuff like watching files, or statting a large number files, didn’t have the same performance characteristics. So you have a situation where you (probably) already have too many components that are too complicated or poorly understood to install t…

> Docker was also just always… there. In the menu bar. Doing stuff. Running system-wide. Updating itself, constantly.

lol wtf? This tells me everything I need to know. If that’s what “docker” is to you, sounds like a major skill issue.

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