Ask HN: What is the best source to learn Docker in 2023?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
  • ama

    (Mostly Docker) Ask me anything! (by BretFisher)

  • Portainer

    Making Docker and Kubernetes management easy.

  • I'd say that going from Docker Compose to Docker Swarm is the first logical step, because it's included in a Docker install and also uses the same Compose format (with more parameters, such as deployment constraints, like which node hostname or tag you want a certain container to be scheduled on): https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3... That said, you won't see lots of Docker Swarm professionally anymore - it's just the way the job market is, despite it being completely sufficient for many smaller projects out there, I'm running it in prod successfully so far and it's great.

    Another reasonably lightweight alternative would be Hashicorp Nomad, because it's free, simple to deploy and their HCL format isn't too bad either, as long as you keep things simple, in addition to them supporting more than just container workloads: https://www.hashicorp.com/products/nomad That said, if you don't buy into HashiStack too much, then there won't be too much benefit from learning HCL and translating the contents of various example docker-compose.yml files that you see in a variety of repos out there, although their other tools are nice - for example, Consul (a service mesh). This is a nice but also a bit niche option.

    Lastly, there is Kubernetes. It's complicated, even more so when you get into solutions like Istio, typically eats up lots of resources, can be difficult to manage and debug, but does pretty much anything that you might need, as long as you have either enough people to administer it, or a wallet that's thick enough for you to pay one of the cloud vendors to do it for you. Personally, I'd look into the lightweight clusters at first, like k0s, MicroK8s, or perhaps the K3s project in particular: https://k3s.io/

    I'd also suggest that if you get this far, don't be afraid to look into options for dashboards and web based UIs to make exploring things easier:

      - for Docker Swarm and Kubernetes there is Portainer: https://www.portainer.io/

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

    InfluxDB logo
  • ctop

    Top-like interface for container metrics

  • In the terminal, there are also a few useful projects:

      - for Docker, there is ctop: https://github.com/bcicen/ctop

  • k9s

    🐶 Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style!

  • - for Kubernetes, there is k9s: https://k9scli.io/

  • k3s

    Lightweight Kubernetes

  • I'd say that going from Docker Compose to Docker Swarm is the first logical step, because it's included in a Docker install and also uses the same Compose format (with more parameters, such as deployment constraints, like which node hostname or tag you want a certain container to be scheduled on): https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3... That said, you won't see lots of Docker Swarm professionally anymore - it's just the way the job market is, despite it being completely sufficient for many smaller projects out there, I'm running it in prod successfully so far and it's great.

    Another reasonably lightweight alternative would be Hashicorp Nomad, because it's free, simple to deploy and their HCL format isn't too bad either, as long as you keep things simple, in addition to them supporting more than just container workloads: https://www.hashicorp.com/products/nomad That said, if you don't buy into HashiStack too much, then there won't be too much benefit from learning HCL and translating the contents of various example docker-compose.yml files that you see in a variety of repos out there, although their other tools are nice - for example, Consul (a service mesh). This is a nice but also a bit niche option.

    Lastly, there is Kubernetes. It's complicated, even more so when you get into solutions like Istio, typically eats up lots of resources, can be difficult to manage and debug, but does pretty much anything that you might need, as long as you have either enough people to administer it, or a wallet that's thick enough for you to pay one of the cloud vendors to do it for you. Personally, I'd look into the lightweight clusters at first, like k0s, MicroK8s, or perhaps the K3s project in particular: https://k3s.io/

    I'd also suggest that if you get this far, don't be afraid to look into options for dashboards and web based UIs to make exploring things easier:

      - for Docker Swarm and Kubernetes there is Portainer: https://www.portainer.io/

  • docker-node-example

    An example Node / Express app that's using Docker and Docker Compose.

  • If your goal is to "learn Docker", I have around 100+ free blog posts and YouTube videos at: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/tag/docker-tips-tricks-and-tu...

    https://github.com/nickjj/docker-node-example is an up to date Node example[0] that's ready to go for development and production and sets up GitHub Actions. Its readme links to a DockerCon talk from about a year ago that covers most of the patterns used in that project and if not some of my more recent blog posts cover the rest.

    It doesn't cover feature branch deployments tho, in my opinion that's unrelated to Docker.

    [0]: You can replace "node" in the GitHub URL with flask, rails, django and phoenix for other example apps in other tech stacks.

  • Docker Swarm

    Source repo for Docker's Documentation (by docker)

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

    WorkOS logo
  • bocker

    Docker implemented in around 100 lines of bash

  • Docker implemented in around 100 lines of bash: https://github.com/p8952/bocker

    This is the most mindblowing example for enterprise security teams that think Docker is a new threat on a single tenant Linux host.

    No, buddies, all this stuff is already there. If you were fine with your visibility before*, you're still fine. Go find a real problem while we play with our developer dopamine.

    * NARRATOR: They shouldn't have been.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts