About Docker: Diving into Docker — Part 2
No conversation about containers is complete without talking about Docker. But when somebody says “Docker” they can be referring to any of at least three things:
- Docker, Inc. the company
- Docker the container runtime and orchestration technology
- Docker the open-source project (this is now called Moby)
If you’re going to make it in the container world, you’ll need to know a bit about all three.
Docker — The TLDR (The Lightweight Docker Runtime)
Docker is software that runs on Linux and Windows. It creates, manages and orchestrates containers. The software is developed in the open as part of the Moby open-source project on GitHub. Docker, Inc. is the overall maintainer of the open-source project. Docker, Inc. also offers commercial versions of Docker with support contracts.
Docker, Inc.
Docker, Inc. is the San Francisco based technology startup founded by French-born American developer and entrepreneur Solomon Hykes. Interestingly, Docker, Inc. started its life as a platform as a service (PaaS) provider called dotCloud. Behind the scenes, the dotCloud platform leveraged Linux containers. To help them create and manage these containers they built an internal tool that they eventually nick-named “Docker”. And that’s how Docker was born!
The Docker runtime and orchestration engine
When most technologists talk about Docker, they’re referring to the Docker Engine. The Docker Engine is the infrastructure plumbing software that runs and orchestrates containers. If you’re a VMware admin, you can think of it as being similar to ESXi. In the same way that ESXi is the core hypervisor technology that runs virtual machines, the Docker Engine is the core container runtime that runs containers. All other Docker, Inc. and 3rd party products plug into the Docker Engine and build around it. The figure shows the Docker Engine at the center. All of the other products in the diagram build on top of the Engine and leverage its core capabilities.
The Docker open-source project (Moby)
The term “Docker” is also used to refer to the open-source Docker project. This is the set of tools that get combined into things like the Docker daemon and client you can download and install from docker.com. However, the project was officially renamed as the Moby project at DockerCon 2017 in Austin, Tx
https://medium.com/@adari.girishkumar/installing-docker-diving-into-docker-part-3-1c3b239a59d5
