Selfhosted

I hate it very much. I am sure it is due to my limited understanding of it, but I've been stuck on some things that were very easy for me using VM.

We have two networks, one of which has very limited internet connectivity, behind proxy. When using VMs, I used to configure everything: code, files, settings on a machine with no restrictions; shut it down; move the VM files to the restricted network; boot and be happily on my way.

I'm unable to make this work with docker. Getting my Ubuntu server fetch its updates behind proxy is easy enough; setting it for python Pip is another level; realising the specific python libraries need special keys to work around proxies is yet another; figuring out how to get it done for Docker and python under it is when I gave up. Why can it not be as simple as the VM!

Maybe I'm not looking using the right terms or maybe I should go and learn docker "properly", but there is no doubt that using Docker is much more difficult for my use case than using VMs.

Don't learn Docker, learn containers. Docker is merely one of the first runtimes, and a rather shit one at that (it's a bunch of half-baked projects - container signing as one major example).

Learn Kubernetes, k3s is probably a good place to start. Docker-compose is simply a proprietary and poorly designed version of it. If you know Kubernetes, you'll quickly be able to pick up docker-compose if you ever need to.

You can use buildah bud (part of the Podman ecosystem) to build containerfiles (exactly the same thing as dockerfiles without the trademark). Buildah can also be used without containerfiles (your containerfiles simply becomes a script in the language of your choice - e.g. bash), which is far more versatile. Speaking of Podman, if you want to keep things really simple you can manually create a bunch of containers in a pod and then ask Podman to create a set of systemd units for you. Podman supports nearly all of what docker does (with exception to docker's bjorked signing) and has identical command line syntax. Podman can also host a docker-compatible socket if you need to use it with something that really wants docker.

I'm personally a big fan of Podman, but I'm also a fan of anything that isn't Docker: LXD is another popular runtime, and containerd is (IIRC) the runtime underpinning docker. There's also firecracker or kubevirt, which go full circle and let you manage tiny VMs like containers.

There are teachings I have read/ discovered through YouTube (can't remember exactly where) about the reasons and the philosophy behind moving to docker, or having it as a state machine.

Have you considered looking into dockers alternatives, also ?

Here is 1 of the sources that may give you insights:

https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/docker-alternatives/

-- There has been some concerns over docker's licensing and, as such, some people have started preferring solutions such as podman and containerd.

Both are good in terms of compatibility and usability, however I have not used them extensively.

Nonetheless, I am currently using docker for my own hyperserver [Edit2: oops, I meant hypervisor ✓, not hyperserver] purposes. And I am also a little concerned about the future of docker, and would consider changing sometime in the future.

[Edit1: I am using docker because it is easy to make custom machines, with all files configurations, and deploy them that way. It is a time saver. But performance wise, I would not recommend it for major machines that contain major machine processes and services. And that's just the gist of it].

i use it for gitea, nextcloud, redis, postgres, and a few rest servers and love it!, super easy

it can suck for things like homelab stablediffusion and things that require gpu or other hardware.