Getting Started with Docker: What You Need to Know

You know, I've faced backlash for saying this, but using chatGPT can be really beneficial for navigating Docker. It tends to have a solid understanding of tech stacks and can offer detailed answers tailored to your questions. Just remember to use it for conversation, not as a search engine!

One analogy I found helpful is this: VMs virtualize hardware, while Docker virtualizes software. I’m still getting the hang of things myself, but I think using Docker Compose is one of the best ways to manage and set up your images—it creates a solid base for your applications. I’m planning next to explore Portainer for management; that should help a lot!

Using a virtual machine (VM) is certainly an option, but Docker containers are way quicker to spin up. With Docker, you can rapidly set up and tear down services, and it saves time and resources since you can build and share Docker images easily.

There are a couple of big benefits to using containers:
- They ensure that all necessary dependencies are included.
- You can run several applications with conflicting dependencies on the same machine without running into issues. You could do this with VMs too, but that often leads to wasting resources since you might need multiple VMs instead of just one.

Containers are definitely more lightweight and faster than VMs. To recreate a container, all you really need is a Dockerfile and some run parameters or a compose file, while with a VM, you usually have to deal with a full image, which takes longer.