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!
Containerized software. The main advantage of this is that every application, or stack of applications, runs in its own ecosystem. You can restart a container whenever without having to reboot your entire system. You can store all data off a container in a volume, so if you hit a snag, you can recreate the container without actually losing any of your configs.
You can also create networks so that apps run in different subnets than other apps.
Very simply put, a docker container is like a mini system that runs on your main system.
Something else I like about docker is docker compose. You can create a container or stack of containers with a single simple YAML file without actually having to install anything yourself. I manage my containers in Portainer.