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!
Building from source is always going to come with complications. That's why most people don't do it. A docker compose file that 'just' downloads the stable release from a repo and starts running is dramatically more simple than cross-referencing all your services to make sure there are no dependency conflicts.
There's an added layer of complexity under the hood to simplify the common use case.