Most interesting apps run as multiple containers (e.g., a database) and then you need to provision volumes for application's data and configuration files. It doesn't seem clear to me that this is a strictly simpler state of affairs than local installation.

The real wins from Docker (for this use case) are:

1. Docker is a better process supervisor than systemd and friends

2. Simple, fast deployment (no manage ansible scripts or rebuild/reboot a machine image)

3. Built-in, standard logging

I think helm (helm.sh) solves that problem. Helm is basically package manager of kubernetes. So to install any app, as long as there is a helm chart for that app, you simply do: helm install myapp and helm will install the app on your kubernetes cluster.

Right, but now you're running Kubernetes for a single server, which is the very definition of overkill. Installing Kubernetes isn't easy, at least not when you consider DNS, ingres/load balancing, logging, etc.

Scenario #1: Installing kubernetes, helm and then installing your app

1. Spend maybe 2-3 full days install kubernetes, helm

2. Spend maybe 3-4 hours installing your app through helm because you're new to installing things in kubernetes.

3. The next app that you want to install on your server is only 20 minutes away, now that you understand how kube and helm work.

Scenario #2:

1. Install app directly on server, hunt down dependencies and other weird things, probably takes 1 day at least, to do the whole installation.

2. The next app that you want to install will take the same amount of time again.

I'd go with Scenario #1 as it is more scalable if I want to install more apps on my server.

Wait, what happened to just using a published Docker image? No need to hunt down dependencies.

I've found using docker-compose is a nice way to do basic orchestration for "self-hosted" type apps.

> Install app directly on server, hunt down dependencies and other weird things, probably takes 1 day at least, to do the whole installation.

What distro are you running? Either I am very spoilt with Arch (+AUR) or this is way off the mark.

Really depends on the package. I’ve had programs that take about a day to install, because the source wasn’t really portable and I really needed to get it to build, and I’ve had programs that are just five commands and it runs. It’s more work if you get the source from upstream than if you get it from ports or Portage or the AUR.

It's still not trivial, but with kubeadm [1] it is much, much easier than it used to be.

[1] https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/independent/create-cluster-...

My experience was with kubeadm. If that’s easy mode, I shudder to think of how things were before!