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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works?

I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

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OpenSUSE MicroOS is basically built around the idea of an "immutable" (read disincentivized to change) core while the majority of user space runs in a Podman container.

It was originally developed as an absolute minimal distro for running containers on servers, but the immutable desktop movement led them to develop a desktop user-facing variant.

Other ideas that are very similar: Fedora SilverBlue (very similar, more mature) and VanillaOS (based on Flatpak insteak of Podman/Docker, very new)

If you install openSUSE these days during setup you have the option to set up the company as a "transactional server" with this immutable environment. I love that writing to /usr/bin fails with read-only file system. It's implemented as a read-only btrfs snapshot.

I'm sorry what these means?, can you explaine it again whit more details?

It's already well-explained in the linked article:

> OpenSUSE MicroOS has a read-only root file system, using Btrfs. Transactional updates are handled by a SUSE-specific wrapper script around the package manager zypper, transactional-update. This creates a new Btrfs snapshot of the root file system and then performs an update of the system. If the installation was successful, the script marks the new snapshot as the default snapshot. On errors, the snapshot is discarded and the previous one remains as the default. A reboot activates the new snapshot.

My comment above was saying that you don't have to use MicroOS per se to get this. A regular openSUSE install supports the transactional server role that does the same thing as MicroOS.

I think in your original comment maybe there is a slightly confusing typo? Is “company“ supposed to actually be “computer” or something like that?

Don't forget Fedora CoreOS, Fedora's actual container-distro! Silverblue/Kinoite are desktop distributions.

The idea and execution is very similar to MicroOS, both on the desktop and on the server. Immutability isn't as scary as it sounds, highly recommend checking it out.

No webgui though, that has to come from another project...

A small correction: Fedora Silverblue & co is highly Flatpak based, and the VanillaOS 'package manager' is Distrobox under the hood, which is a project for running full linux distros inside podman containers intended for desktop users.

RancherOS if you're looking to use something heavily tested but it's got a few weird features like most of the OS also being in containers. If you want something light to play with and get a vanilla docker experience, your best bet is likely Boot2Docker with Portainer.

The existing RancherOS is no longer being maintained, you probably shouldn't be using it anymore:

https://rancher.com/docs/os/v1.x/en/support/

Rancher is working on a new version.

News to me! Apparently I haven't used it in quite some time.

Hasn't 2.x been released for a long time now?

Really? I loved the original RancherOS, would love to see the new version!

I think I'm confusing Rancher "proper" and RancherOS, sorry.

https://github.com/rancher/rancher/releases/tag/v2.7.1

When I last used Portainer on my home setup, the support for configuration-as-code deployment seemed pretty experimental— basically you could roll out a docker-compose config from a URL or upload as a one-off effort, but IIRC it had no ability to track that URL for changes, or update an already-deployed container set to a new configuration. I think you couldn't even give it a URL requiring authentication maybe?

All of this left me feeling like the devs had different goals than I did as a user.

But the current iteration seems like k8s/helm are first-class features now, so yeah, should definitely look again.

docker-the-company maintained https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit when I worked there. I have no idea who maintains it now, but it looks like it is still active (presumably still docker-the-company, since their adopters list [1] lists docker desktop).

[1]: https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/ADOPTERS.md

Clear Linux pitches itself as the perfect Docker host: https://clearlinux.org/downloads/containers

Its almost certainly the most performant distro in this huge thread (unless your host is ARM).

Proxmox with native docker support would've been a dream. I know, it's easy to add it on top (since it's basically a layer over debian), but you still wouldn't get the native GUI support and the proxmox features that come with it. I don't know why they are so keen on not adding docker, and only focusing on LXC. LXC is fine, but it's pretty clear that it is far from being as popular or commonly used as Docker.

VMware has a thing that's basically this also: https://vmware.github.io/vic-product/

But I've never quite understood the appeal. Is it about running untrusted containers with VM-level isolation? Or having a familiar GUI for managing and lifecycling them? Something else?

Fundamentally, I worry that mixing VMs and containers is more likely to end up with the worst of both worlds rather than the best— basically you get the slow bootup of starting the kernel every time, but none of the application-level benefits of sharing base layer storage or mounting the same shared volume to multiple containers at once.

Ah the GUI/container integration is more for homelabs/internal networks type of usage, and I agree that it makes little sense in production. Otherwise you are also right that containers should be managed in a very different way from VMs. Especially when the page you linked boasts about offering a similar experience to deploying VMs for sys admins, which might lead to unoptimal usage for both VMs and containers. (But it at least seems to offer docker container support, not the barely used LXCs. So at least it can be useful)

> the page you linked boasts about offering a similar experience to deploying VMs for sys admins, which might lead to unoptimal usage for both VMs and containers. (But it at least seems to offer docker container support, not the barely used LXCs. So at least it can be useful)

Relatively long-lived, potentially multi-process server things is what LXC is for. It makes more sense to run LXC than Docker in that situation anyway. -_-

With Proxmox since it allows you to run a VM you can run any OS with say a recent Docker version. On that OS, you can run a web GUI for Docker, using Docker. For example, Portainer. Nginx reverse proxy and done.

Although personally, I prefer Podman over Docker.

You can run a docker container inside an lxc container. Which would give you the GUI controls over the near docker equivalent.

HypriotOS (for ARM), but it has not been in development since 2019 or 2020.

Proxmox is neat and you can run any OS under the hood including the suggestions mentioned.

You could also go for NixOS and declare you need OCI (e.g. Docker or Podman) in your Nix config.

VMware's Photon OS is largely designed as a container host - I've been using it for a few years now, and it's excellent. The team are really receptive to external contributors too (it's hosted on GitHub)!

Kind of a left-field pic, and def not exclusively for running docker, but TrueNAS Scale offers a nice abstraction for running docker containers, with the simple webui interface you're asking for. I believe it uses K8s under the hood, and it's coupled with NAS software, but this seems maybe the closest to what you're asking for that I've seen.

https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/scaletutorials/apps/docke...

I was going to suggest this, too. TrueNAS Scale is the quickest and most "it just works" version of bare metal --> docker containers with a web-based UI that I have experienced.

Fedora/RHEL have Cockpit, MicroShift, OKD, OpenShift Local, MiniKube, k3s, MicroK8s, TrueNAS SCALE

I've never used it, but your description made me think of Webmin that I used a long time ago, and apparently the same creators have developed Virtualmin and Cloudmin that give you a web interface for managing Docker images and containers.

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/cloudmin/virtualiza...

Closest thing is probably Synology... but it's pretty basic and you need to use the terminal for some advanced things. I don't know how much a GUI helps because there's still a lot of terminology that needs to be understood.

Is this a desktop? Fedora Silverblue

Is this a server? CoreOS

Portainer or Cockpit for web UI

There is also Fedora IoT which contrary to the name is kinda like Silverblue server or really an easy CoreOS. Works very well for containers.

>Fedora Silverblue

Or Fedora Kinoite! IMO KDE is probably a better fit for the root commenter's "I just want a UI" position.

For the UI part cockpit [1] lets you manage containers (amongst many other things). I use it with fedora for my home server and rarely feel the need to drop into the command line in my day to day.

[1] https://cockpit-project.org/

Its paid SW, but I like Unraid OS for this. It supports Dockers, VMS, and of course an easy to manage hard drive array with parity and ssd caching support. Just being able to chuck all your old drives that are laying around, add them to the pool and bring new life to old HW was worth it for me. The docker and VM support are nice extras.

I’m getting a lot of mileage out of Unraid, but am frustrated by their documentation and Docker implementation. While the system is slick for loading community packaged apps, it’s non trivial to load your own images. their docs are mostly just forum threads.

I’m sure it’s actually very straightforward and I’m just an idiot, but I haven’t had much luck.

Not sure if that's what you're looking for but there are Kubernetes distros. And yes, this also includes a relatively nice Web UI. But it's probably not easy to setup.

lol given the plethora of diverse responses you got.. your fear was well founded.

The quick answer is no. But what is a friendly web UI other than a few 10s of hours work on top of the distros mentioned here? There are a few distros that are very close; they just substitute the web ui for the docker cli. I’ve enjoyed RancherOS, and I want to setup Alpine to run in RAM (it can do that) for some super-fast rPi nonsense.

You might look into Umbrel - https://umbrel.com/

I am working on something like it. It's a specialized, immutable Linux os that blends networking, nas and containers.

We found that even with a web GUI, containers are just too complicated for the typical user "that knows nothing about containers".

Even with a GUI, no matter how nice it is, you need to learn about env vars, port mappings, cni networks, bridging, volume mounts, images, tags, host isolation, etc etc..

Our solution is to wrap apps into pre-packaged recipes. Pretty big trade-off of course, but it makes the installation and management completely fool-proof afterwards.

You can see some screen shots in the documentation here:

https://sentinelc.com/docs/user-guides/administration/manage...

Depending on why you are asking, Qubes OS might be relevant for you.

You could argue that Docker Desktop is basically this.

Docker Desktop is essentially an application, doesn't come close to being a OS or distribution.

A VM to run containers is a fairly large part of Docker Desktop...? https://www.docker.com/blog/the-magic-behind-the-scenes-of-d...

It still requires a full underlying Windows or Mac OS, so it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.

They're asking for an OS their computer can boot into natively.

Not a distro, and don’t know how far you can get without knowing much about docker, but you could deploy something like Portainer.

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