this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The benefit of docker is portability. You can run software anywhere. Rather than going through all this pain of installing and managing systemd services, you can just run a docker container, often in only one command. Docker also handles things like setting environment variables, which are sometimes used by apps as a an alternative for, or even replacement for settings filed, like in the lemmy docker example: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/docker/docker-compose.yml
Docker succeeds where java failed, but in a language agnostic way.
And I disagree with the author's point about disliking docker-only apps, for two main reasons. One, it isn't the developers responsibility to package things for every system, and two, docker containers are mostly self documenting, being very close to simply a shell script. I almost always look at dockerfiles, and I have only seen one or two that are not simple to extract to make them run outside docker.
For example, the lemmy docker image: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/docker/Dockerfile
The author acts like it's some advanced witchcraft or something, but it's just using rust to compile stuff on an debian based system. Every command used to build lemmy is right there. Then, you can look at the environment variables set in the docker compose, and set them in a systemd service or something.
How do I tag people on lemmy?
u/tony