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What is Docker?

Published on February 25, 2021
Erika Heidi

By Erika Heidi

Developer Advocate

What is Docker?

Docker is a popular open source containerization tool used to provide a portable and consistent runtime environment for software applications, while consuming less resources than a traditional server or virtual machine. Docker uses containers, isolated user-space environments that run at the operating system level and share system resources such as the kernel and the filesystem.

While other container systems exist, Docker became popular for providing a more accessible and comprehensive interface around the technology, and for creating a public repository of base container images that users can build upon when creating containerized environments to run their applications.

To learn more about Docker, you can refer to the following resources:

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About the author

Erika Heidi
Erika Heidi
Author
Developer Advocate
See author profile

Dev/Ops passionate about open source, PHP, and Linux. Former Senior Technical Writer at DigitalOcean. Areas of expertise include LAMP Stack, Ubuntu, Debian 11, Linux, Ansible, and more.

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