I couldn’t possibly care less about Docker Desktop. Portainer is a much better solution when graphical administration becomes necessary. (Which should be never)
A middle ground is LazyDocker. Lets you do most of the stuff Portainer does without leaving the SSH terminal.
Docker desktop is so garbage. Why build a client that doesn’t support connections to a remote host by default? It’s so 90s.
That was my initial reaction too. “Have they considered shipping it as not-dogshit?”
This is interesting to me for my use case scenario, specifically SteamOS.
What I’m trying to do is run an emulated Everquest server (lookup EQEmu). The community there has several methods of installation of the server, Windows, Linux, and Docker. The hurdle to overcome is the immutable file system, specifically when it comes to the database (MariaDB). I think I may have found a work around via Linux brew and installing MariaDB through that (which I’ve done, I just have to make the final connection). However the Docker setup, when running it on a separate distro is stupid easy. If they make this a Flatpak, it can potentially be the solution I’m looking for.
Really the end goal is creating a Single player Everquest. I have a dual boot with it operating via Windows, but would much prefer to have it on the SteamOS side of the house.
There might be several misunderstandings:
- Docker Desktop ≠ Docker Engine, and I think what you (and several in this thread) are thinking is actually Docker Engine. Docker Desktop ultimately includes a Docker Engine inside, but it does not appear you need that virtual machine (e.g. running non-Linux code). See: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/faqs/linuxfaqs/#what-is-the-difference-between-docker-desktop-for-linux-and-docker-engine
- Docker Desktop is based on KVM, which already works with Flatpak. So this is not something new. For example, GNOME Boxes is available as Flatpak and provides a way to run KVM guests in SteamOS.
- Starting with version 3.5 (the current stable) SteamOS already includes Podman with the default installation. And running the daemon-y Docker Engine “bare metal” is not going to be any easier with the immutable filesystem. While Docker Desktop solves this by using KVM, it adds another layer with performance loss, vs. just running Podman containers.
So what you want is already available, and no Docker Desktop is actually needed.
Ooh, didn’t know about podman. That’s neat.
Edit: shame they didn’t include podman-compose as well.
Installing podman-compose with the immutable filesystem is fairly straight forward, since it is just a single Python file (https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/blob/devel/podman_compose.py), which you can basically install anywhere in your path. You can also first bootstrap pip (
python3 get-pip.py --userwithget-pip.pyfrom https://github.com/pypa/get-pip) and then dopip3 install --user podman-compose.Yep. That’s what I plan to do, just a shame it isn’t already there… also that I’m travelling from tomorrow so might have to defer it for a bit XD.
YES PLEASE
I personally found Portainer more useful as it doesn’t require a VM unlike Docker desktop.
Let’s make mounts and permissions even harder to get right! But I’m totally up for a flathub release.
