Hi! Question in the title.
I get that its super easy to setup. But its really worthwhile to have something that:
- runs everything as root (not many well built images with proper useranagement it seems)
- you cannot really know which stuff is in the images: you must trust who built it
- lots of mess in the system (mounts, fake networks, rules…)
I always host on bare metal when I can, but sometimes (immich, I look at you!) Seems almost impossible.
I get docker in a work environment, but on self hosted? Is it really worth while? I would like to hear your opinions fellow hosters.
It’s great that you do install things on bare metal, I did that in the beginning until I discovered docker and I will never go back. Docker/ podman compose is just so good
Dive is a great tool for inspecting docker images. I wish I found it sooner.
Need to study podman probably, stuff running as root is my main dislike.
Probably if in only used docker images created by me I would be less concerned of losing track of what I am really deploying, but this would deflect the main advantage of easy deploy?
Portability is a point I didn’t considered too… But rebuilding a bare metal server properly compatimentized took me a few hours only, so is that really so important?
You can run docker rootless https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/ but you have to switch to podman some day anyway, althiugh that might be in a far away future.
If you are concerned about root you may be concerned about the docker port dilemma as well, podman solves that as well
Depends on how much you value your time.
Compare a few hours on bare metal to a few minutes with containers. Then consider that you also spend extra time on bare metal cleaning up messes. Containers don’t make a mess in the first place.