You don't have to ship a second OS just to containerize your app.

Isn't Docker massively insecure when compared to the likes of Podman, since Docker has to run as a root daemon?

Always someone who needs to explain and ruin the joke..

Docker is more than a cop out for than one use case. It's a way for quickly deploy an app irrespective of an environment, so you can scale and rebuild quickly. It fixes a problem that used to be solved by VMs, so in that way it's more efficient.

I hate that it puts package management in Devs hands. The same Devs that usually want root access to run their application and don’t know a vulnerability scan for the life of them. So now rather than having the one up to date version of a package on my system I may have 3 different old ones with differing vulnerabilities and devs that don’t want to change it because “I need this version because it works!”

Why put in a little effort when we can just waste a gigabyte of your hard drive instead?

I have similar feelings about how every website is now a JavaScript application.

If this is your take your exposure has been pretty limited. While I agree some devs take it to the extreme, Docker is not a cop out. It (and similar containerization platforms) are invaluable tools.

Using devcontainers (Docker containers in the IDE, basically) I'm able to get my team developing in a consistent environment in mere minutes, without needing to bother IT.

Using Docker orchestration I'm able to do a lot in prod, such as automatic scaling, continuous deployment with automated testing, and in worst case near instantaneous reverts to a previously good state.

And that's just how I use it as a dev.

As self hosting enthusiast I can deploy new OSS projects without stepping through a lengthy install guide listing various obscure requirements, and if I did want to skip the container (which I've only done a few things) I can simply read the Dockerfile to figure out what I need to do instead of hoping the install guide covers all the bases.

And if I need to migrate to a new host? A few DNS updates and SCP/rsync later and I'm done.

Docker or containers in general provide isolation too, not just declarative image generation, it's all neatly packaged into one tool that isn't that heavy on the system either, it's not a cop out at all.

If I could choose, not for laziness, but for reproducibility and compatibility, I would only package software in 3 formats:

• Nix package
• Container image
• Flatpak

The rest of the native packaging formats are all good in their own way, but not as good. Some may have specific use cased that make them best like Appimage, soooo result...
Yeah, no universal packaging format yet

I agree that it's a "cop-out", but the issue it mitigates is not an individual one but a systemic one. We've made it very, very difficult for apps not to rely on environmental conditions that are effectively impossible to control without VMs or containerization. That's bad, but it's not fixable by asking all app developers to make their apps work in every platform and environment, because that's a Herculean task even for a single program. (Just look at all the compatibility work in a codebase that really does work everywhere, such as vim.)

I'm not a dev exactly. But I got my Linux skills using Slackware and I still have no problem compiling something if there is no package for it. In some cases I will use a appimage(Cura) but for the most part I just install natively. I use ubuntu but always start eliminating snaps on any install and it really doesn't take that long.

I love docker, it of course comes with some inefficiencies, but let's be real, getting an app to run on every possible environment with any possible other app or configuration or.... that could interfere with yours in some way is hell.

In an ideal world, something like docker is indeed not needed, but the past decades have proven beyond a doubt that alas, we don't live in this utopia. So something like docker that just sets up a private environment for the app so that nothing else can interfere with it.... why not? Anything i've got running on docker is just so stable. I never have to worry that any change i do might affect those apps. Updating them is automated, ...

Not wasting my and the developers time in exchange for a bit of computer resources, sounds like a good deal. If we find a better way for apps to be able to run on any environment, that would of course be even better, but we haven't, so docker it is :).