And since everything is contained, it makes managing all of your dependencies much easier. Since your container is a single image, it makes it very easy to version track different builds of your container. RELATED: How to Install Docker and Docker Compose on Linux Why Is Docker So Useful?ĭocker takes the same kind of version control and packaging that tools like Git and NPM provide and allows you to use it for your server software. If your app makes use of nginx and Node.js, the container image will include them, but you won’t be burdened with all the other userland apps you’d generally find on Linux. The Docker container image includes only what your app needs to run. You couldn’t though, for example, run FreeBSD on Ubuntu, since the kernels are different. Docker can install this user software to the container, allowing you to run a CentOS container on Ubuntu.

The exact flavor of Linux doesn’t actually matter most versions of Linux will run the same kernel, and only differ in the user software. Docker Engine runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, and supports Linux and Windows for Docker containers.

Using docker on mac