Docker to me is a proof that distro package management has failed. People would rather bundle a snapshot of an entire operating system with every application they use, instead of trying to install a compatible set of packages on the host OS.
In my use case - I started running Arch Linux and installing the packages I want - however aarch64 w/ prop Mesa drivers = bad time. too few AUR packages has aarch64 binaries - would end up compiling nearly everything. eventually I snapped trying to build my own PKGBUILD for printer drivers (that worked on my arch/hardware) instead of just using the provided install script that had ubuntu aarch64 support.
while a sleek minimalist system, ticking smoothly, is really nice - to get to that "happy place" on many bits of hardware can be tricky. this constantly getting stuck and having side effects across different programs on my system led to me taking the same approach I take deploying in production. just install stock os, get docker, then run docker compose pointing to your persisted config/data.
What people want is to develop and run their applications with the least amount of friction possible.
That is the purpose of the operating system: make it easier to write and run applications. Anything that gets in the way of that is bad.
What containers and other forms of virtualization provide is enhanced ability to deploy and run applications cheaper than without it.
Linux kernel and modern networking is incredibly sophisticated and Unix design of the past can't allow people to take full advantage of it in a reasonable manner. This is why they switched to containers and virtual machines.
Because, frankly, running one Linux operating per application actually makes more sense than what people were doing before.
Package management systems, no matter how sophisticated, can't solve these problems.
i agree - it's a failing of the pkg management and devs. but also - the hardware developers. if you rely on prop blobs - docker is a way to liberate yourself somewhat from this - you dont need to have a well maintained upstream
As a brain collective it may be before that we weren't conceptualizing our systems at an atomic enough level that containers introduced. Containers in service to our isolation mental models may be the true benefit of the trend. Even if the underlying technology dies or falls out of trend, the ideas will surely survive.
For my career I have learned to appreciate GNU/unix more by using containers.
No. I think the package maintainers did the best they could in the face of an ever rising mountain of dependency.