Easiest Way to Install Docker on Ubuntu

Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications, whether on laptops, data center VMs, or the cloud.

The official installation docs are available on the Docker site. It’s a 2600+ word document having a read time of 17 mins. If you’d rather head over to the DigitalOcean community site you’ll just find a rip-off the original docs.

After numerous installs of Docker on virtual servers I found that it is rather a simple task.

How to install

Fire up your terminal and type just one command.

sudo apt-get install docker.io

You’re done! This installs both the client and server programs on your system.

Check your install

Now let’s check if every installed right. Type the command.

docker version

If the output shows both Client and Server versions, you’re all set.

If you didn’t get the Server version details don’t fret.

Just run these couple of lines to resolve the issue.

sudo usermod -aG docker $(whoami)
sudo shutdown -r now

Feeling awesome? Run hello world.

Docker is used to run containers. Let’s run the hello world container now. Type in the command.

docker run hello-world

This produces a message that tells you what Docker did behind the scenes. Do read it. It’s really amazing that Docker did all that in just a couple of seconds.

You’re all set on your Docker journey. These are really exciting times for containers and the cloud.

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