Hacker News Reader

Comment by sverhagen | Hacker News Reader

I don't live my life entirely on the command line either, but GUIs for Docker are just an interesting niche to me, for which I just don't understand what the ven diagram is between people that want Docker containers running locally, know that that's what they want, and know how it all works, but then don't want to do the small handful of commands at the prompt needed to get it running...

View on HN

I don't necessarily want docker containers running locally as some hobbyist, they might be just part of the process, and if the gui helps me move through that process efficiently without having to add more commands to my memory, I'm happy about that. CLIs are great, but when nearly everything has one, those small amount of commands become quite a lot in aggregate.

there are ways to minimize memorization, most important:

1. keep log, docs, records of whatever you are doing. most commands are repetitive.

2. copilot or chatgpt, they help a lot with command lines and simple utilities

3. amazon Q sucks in comparison.

4. it used to be google, but now LLMs do it better. less scrolling and ads/spam.

Yes, either all that above or just GUI for rare occasions.

yes, when it's possible. but guis may not exist or may be not better than console, like in case of ffmpeg. the best, of course, is smart assistant who can take verbal commands. either human or llm.

but my post was about doing complex tasks in general. try to offload. another advise for developers is to write comments, even in your small hobby projects. this way you don't have to memorize it all. this was learned hard way. i usually also have a separate documentation with plans, ideas, algorithms, useful info. remind: this is for hobby projects.

and important thing: touch typing is must have. this makes it all much easier

I do think these are good suggestions for anyone getting started with CLIs. Initially they struck me as a bit redundant, but only because the point I meant to make was that because I've already been doing most of that for ages, I'm happy to delegate that to a good gui if one comes along, since that is both more enjoyable, less error prone (mostly), and less tedious. Notes, comments, and LLM generated commands are lovely, but needing to rely on them less, particularly in situations where you can perform some common subset of tasks with better information layout, interface, and progress/state feedback, is worth paying for sometimes.

FFMpeg is a good example though of one I'm happy to just have my notes on, but since I do literally only ever use it for one or two types of tasks, I'm happy to have that sit behind the scenes. Others might use it in many versatile ways, for which I'd be grateful to have those options readily available in my terminal.

Life is full of many things to do and so not everyone have the luxury to priorities logging ones life for everything they do. 2 or GUI are very feasible option for busy people.

you don't have to "prioritize logging" to have logs, calling this a "luxury" is quite bizarre. You can simply use tools that do bash history search, or one of the many copy-paste memorizer tools, and you'll save many hours out of those "many things to do" simply by typing ctrl+s. Some people are busy simply because they want to.

My preferred solution is to have a GUI, then I don't need to do anything extra to remember CLI commands.

I would have assumed the same, but Docker makes ~100m ARR on docker desktop so it’s def not niche.

https://sacra.com/research/docker-plg-pivot/

Docker Desktop includes the easy to run Docker Engine / Docker Machine. I think is fair to assume that most of the revenue is not from users that want a GUI but from users that want a stable Docker Engine experience.

Anecdotal, but my experience, as someone who gives DevOps professional services for many organizations, is that windows users that need containers know that they are called Docker and just download that. Must of them absolutely need GUI. Most of them doesn't know that Docker Desktop requires license, and I convert them to Rancher Desktop.

Nothing wrong with paying for good software.

It's nearly a crime when a government pay with tax money for product that is in low usage and have zero advantage over the free alternative.

just because it costs money, doesn't mean it's good software.

That seems like a non sequitur.

How do I install and run docker containers on windows without docker desktop? I’ve made attempts in the past but never actually succeeded, and just enddd up using docker desktop.

Step 1. Uninstall docker Desktop completely (and images and builds and storage and containers) and reboot. Step 2. Install Rancher Desktop.

If you also need docker emulation with podman too

Step 3. Install Podman Step 4. Install Podman Desktop.

Now a. Either work with Rancher Desktop (open it) and Docker is available also in cmd line (docker, docker ccompose , etc) b. Or Start Podman Desktop to configure Podman (or just use comandline to configure)

Now in cmd you not only have docker and friends but also podman and friends

Bonus, you have Kubernetes tools too and you are FOSS.

Happy composing :-)

PS: I think you cannot start both. I have both installed and never looked back. Windows 10 x64 PRO

> want Docker containers running locally, know that that's what they want, and know how it all works, but then don't want to do the small handful of commands at the prompt needed to get it running

Consider the case of a team of people collaborating on a software stack - the prototypical use case includes Docker Compose at the simplest and a full K8s stack at the extreme. There is quite often a minimum of 3 containers here; frontend, API/Backend and a database server. If you start to add observability tools, async/batch/event execution, caching, automated integration testing, etc, the number of "layers" in the stack grows quickly. In addition, each component may have unique per-environment or even per-user customizations.

Often one ore two people will manage the stack itself and provide instructions on how to get the whole thing working for others using a specific defined selection of easy to use tools that essentially offer minimal prerequisite knowledge to use

"Install X, run Y, get to work."

It saves a lot of time for the intern on the UI team who just wants to add a component to one page and test it locally and not also have to learn how to deploy the entire stack from scratch.

Frontenders that need to run backends in my experience are such a cohort.

I use Docker Desktop on both my macbooks, despite shunning IDEs in favour of a decent text editor and the command line. I use it for 2 reasons: to manage the Linux VM, and to twiddle the occasional setting. For running the containers themselves, or running `system prune` when everything gets cluttered up, I use the CLI.

Same reason, don't fight every time need docker upgraded, on Linux I simply use docker package but in windows and Mac docker desktop is my go to route, but I'm trying podman desktop, I use fedora and sometimes I used podman until stopped because the Nvidia, same reason always does not fight over my tooling

Orbstack is absolutely worth the money on MacOS, fwiw

I agree on the docker / podman, but for Kubernetes, Lens is is really useful. It isn't a substitute for knowing the command line but can be much quicker.

I use non Linux systems for which docker desktop was the best way to have docker running without having to do much work.

GUIs excel at exploring. Exploring is a very very large part of what I do when running containers locally.

Your false assumption is that most of its users know what is Docker and how it works.

relatedly, I prefer using the github app instead of using the CLI.

The problem is, I forget the commands all the time, because I use them on rare occasions. It gets the how this shit worked moment off your shoulder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com