I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

I installed a few different distros, landed on Cinnamon Mint. I’m not a tech dummy, but I feel I’m in over my head.

I installed Docker in the terminal (two things I’m not familiar with) but I can’t find it anywhere. Googled some stuff, tried to run stuff, and… I dunno.

I’m TRYING to learn docker so I can set up audiobookshelf and Sonarr with Sabnzbd.

Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?

Is there a Linux for people who are deeply entrenched in how Windows works? I’m not above googling command lines that I can copy and paste but I’ve spent HOURS trying to figure this out and have gotten no where…

Thanks! Sorry if this is the wrong place for this

EDIT : holy moly. I posted this and went to bed. Didn’t quite realize the hornets nest I was going to kick. THANK YOU to everyone who has and is about to comment. It tells you how much traction I usually get because I usually answer every response on lemmy and the former. For this one I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.

I’ve got a few little ones so time to sit and work on this is tough (thus 5h last night after they were in bed) but I’m going to start picking at all your suggestions (and anyone else who contributes as well)

Thank you so much everyone! I think windows has taught me to be very visually reliant and yelling into the abyss that is the terminal is a whole different beast - but I’m willing to give it a go!

fidodo,

I can at least assure you that as a developer, docker is annoying to set up and their documentation is confusing.

Most things in Linux are easier to set up but sometimes installing things happens to be harder than it should be and docker is one of them.

You should keep in mind that compared to other OSs, a lot of Linux software is CLI only, so they won’t always show up in the applications list and you’ll need to check if you have it in a terminal.

Secret300,

I don’t mean to be that guy but like did you even read a basic tutorial? Or did it install and the docker commands aren’t working still?

delirious_owl,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

rtft

sibloure,

There is lazydocker which gives a visual interface to docker in the terminal window. May be worth looking into.

electric_nan,

Docker’s hard. I never really got my head around it. I used “Swizzin Community Edition” to setup my media server. It was really easy compared to Docker-based solutions.

NateSwift,

Docker is professional software and because of that isn’t always the most intuitive thing to use.

The first big thing to get your head around is that there is no GUI. Everything you do to manage docker is through the command line. If you really want to, there’s some third party GUI software for managing Docker, but I haven’t used it in the 2 years I’ve been using Docker.

Once you’ve installed docker, there’s a little bit of setup required to make it run smoothly. The Docker Docs page on Linux post-installation steps has detailed instructions on how to do that and how to run a test container

tkk13909,

Man, good luck. Is there no other way you can accomplish that without Docker. I’ve been using Linux for years and I still don’t know how to set up a docker container lol

datavoid, (edited )

Docker is not needed for this, it just helps keep things clean.

Edit - can the next person who downvotes this please explain why I’m wrong? I have run all these services without docker with no issue.

NateSwift,

You’re right. The comments here have been really weird and kinda missed the whole point of OP’s post.

Nibodhika,
  1. Docker is not needed, I’ve had lots of self hosted things for years before using docker.
  2. Docker is not that hard, you just need to learn it like anything else, once upon a time going to a webpage was an unknown thing to all of us, yet now it’s a daily thing.
possiblylinux127,

I think it will be easier to use docker compose with a premade docker compose file.

Create a new directory cd into it and then nano docker-compose.yaml. For instance, here is a docker compose I found one the audio bookshelf website:


<span style="color:#323232;">version: "3.7"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  services: 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    audiobookshelf:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      ports: - 13378:80
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      volumes:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        - </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        - </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts - </path/to/config>:/config
</span><span style="color:#323232;">        - </path/to/metadata>:/metadata
</span>

www.audiobookshelf.org/docs/#docker-compose-insta…

MangoPenguin,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?

Type docker in the terminal, it’s a CLI application.

But it sounds like you might want to install Docker Desktop, which does give you a GUI to use.

julianh, (edited )

Docker is a developer* tool, not really something you should be using without some technical knowledge, or at least some experience in the terminal. It’s purely a terminal application, so you just type “docker” in the terminal to use it. You can also type “man docker” to view the manual (which shows arguments and command you can use) but again, that won’t help much without some prior knowledge.

The things you’re trying to use look like self-hosted web servers, which is a lot to set up for someone who’s new to the terminal. I won’t stop you if you want, but be warned. I’d recommend using something simpler like cozy, which you should be able to find and download in the software store.

*Edit: it’s not only a developer tool, it’s used for deployment as well. I lumped the two together. It’s still a tool made for people with more familiarity using the terminal though.

atzanteol,

Docker is a developer tool

First, it’s not. Second - so what if it is? Sounds like gatekeeping to me. They’ve expressed interest in learning how to use it, that’s enough.

julianh,

If they want to use it that’s fine. I’m just cautioning against using a command line tool like that until they feel somewhat comfortable with the terminal.

atzanteol,

The terminal is not some arcane source of dark power to be feared. It’s one of the defining characteristics of the Linux ecosystem. Anybody looking to use Linux should be expecting to use it and tools that are built for it.

It’s not like they could even really do any damage with docker either.

Coreidan,

Docker is a deployment tool. Not a developer tool.

Unless you’re trying to simplify your deployment stack there isn’t really a compelling reason to install it unless you’re trying to learn something new for the fun of it.

With that said you need things to deploy to make it useful. Like a database server, web server, etc.

Shareni,

If you’re not planning to actually learn Docker, use an LLM AI to help you out. I just tried the following prompt in Gemini “generate docker-compose.yml that runs audiobookshelf and Sonarr with Sabnzbd” and it generated something that looks reasonable. Then you can follow it up with prompts like “how do I auto start it on linux?” and it will generate the systemd unit, and also tell you what commands to run.

LainTrain, (edited )

Sudo docker will do the trick. Docker does some networking shit so it needs admin privileges

Don’t give up, don’t listen to goober 🤓 itt telling you to read manpages that shit is worthless.

bionicjoey,

Better yet, add yourself to the Docker group. You shouldn’t have to Sudo it

h3ndrik, (edited )

Try a more managed and out-of-the-box solution first, then work your way down to the commandline. I’d recommend one of the NAS solutions like openmediavault (if they still do docker) or cockpit-project.org

or Docker for Desktop or podman.io

(maybe lxc containers with proxmox or unraid)

Nibodhika,

Ok, so I don’t know the specifics, this might not be entirely accurate, but this is a general step-by-step guide for Debian based distros like Mint.

Install docker

The first thing you need to do is install docker, this can be done via whatever GUI you use for a package manager or via the terminal using sudo apt install docker (I’m not sure docker is the name of the package, I’m just guessing, you can do an apt search docker to see what’s available)

Add yourself to dockers

This is likely not needed on Mint, but just in case your user should be in the docker group, i.e. run sudo gpasswd -a docker. I’m almost sure Mint does this by default.

Enable docker systemd

This also might not be needed, again I’m almost sure Mint does this for you when you install docker, but just in case the command is sudo systemctl enable docker

Reboot

Because there have been changes to your user groups you need to relogin, easier to reboot.

use docker

Now you have a system with docker, you can test this by running the following command docker run hello-world, if you see a bunch of text that contains “Hello from docker” docker is working.

setup a docker-compose file

Create a folder, and in that folder create a text file called docker-compose.yaml in that file. This file will tell docker what you want to run, for example to have Nextcloud (which is an awesome self-hosted drive alternative. I’m not going to teach you the specific services you want, you can figure those out by looking at their page on the linuxserver page or something) you can look here hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/nextcloud on how to write your docker-compose file, for example you could write:


<span style="color:#63a35c;">services</span><span style="color:#323232;">:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">nextcloud</span><span style="color:#323232;">:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">image</span><span style="color:#323232;">: </span><span style="color:#183691;">lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">container_name</span><span style="color:#323232;">: </span><span style="color:#183691;">nextcloud
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">environment</span><span style="color:#323232;">:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">PUID=1000
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">PGID=1000
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">TZ=Etc/UTC
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">volumes</span><span style="color:#323232;">:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">./config:/config
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">./data:/data
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">ports</span><span style="color:#323232;">:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">8080:80
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      - </span><span style="color:#183691;">443:443
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    </span><span style="color:#63a35c;">restart</span><span style="color:#323232;">: </span><span style="color:#183691;">unless-stopped
</span>

Then open a terminal on that folder and run docker compose up -d after that is done open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080 and begin using Nextcloud.

scratchandgame,

Is there a Linux for people who are deeply entrenched in how Windows works

How Windows works is different I think?

I’m not above googling command lines that I can copy and paste but I’ve spent HOURS trying to figure this out and have gotten no where…

You don’t need.

I heard you are using a debian-based distro, can you read the man pages for apt?

Then use apt to find docker, and get it.

Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?

It is not installed in the terminal. It is installed on the system, ON DISK!

docker should be installed on /usr/bin. It is on PATH. Type docker and see what happen. If not, try searching on /usr/bin (on BSDs third party software are separated from base, so docker should be installed on /usr/local/bin)

And the docker service should be started, if not. Use the fucking systemctl to start it. The service name should be docker, if I recall correctly

N0x0n, (edited )

Been there, now I have over 12 containers running h24 on an old spare laptop with everything exposed via traefik (reverse proxy), self-signed CA, local DNS… what a ride ^^'.

The best advice and thats what helped me to get going, is to watch/follow some youtube videos about docker and how to expose your first container locally, so you get the general gist on how it works.

2 years ago, NetworkChuck introduced me to docker container. Not saying he’s the best youtuber to get you into docker and learning and stuff, but it’s a GOOD starting point :).

There is also Christian Lempa, Tech world with nana, who also will you give you some good pointer with docker and docker compose.

Good luck !

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