Hi! Im new to self hosting. Currently i am running a Jellyfin server on an old laptop. I am very curious to host other things in the future like immich or other services. I see a lot of mention of a program called docker.

search this on The internet I am still Not very clear what it does.

Could someone explain this to me like im stupid? What does it do and why would I need it?

Also what are other services that might be interesting to self host in The future?

Many thanks!

EDIT: Wow! thanks for all the detailed and super quick replies! I’ve been reading all the comments here and am concluding that (even though I am currently running only one service) it might be interesting to start using Docker to run all (future) services seperately on the server!

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    112·
    8 hours ago

    So instead of having problems getting the fucking program to run, you have problems getting docker to properly build/run when you need it to.

    At work, I have one program that fails to build an image because of a 3rd party package who forgot to update their pgp signature; one that builds and runs, but for some reason gives a 404 error when I try to access it on localhost; one that whoever the fuck made it literally never ran it, because the Dockerfile was missing some 7 packages in the apt install line.

    • turmacar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      Building from source is always going to come with complications. That’s why most people don’t do it. A docker compose file that ‘just’ downloads the stable release from a repo and starts running is dramatically more simple than cross-referencing all your services to make sure there are no dependency conflicts.

      There’s an added layer of complexity under the hood to simplify the common use case.