Docker containers

Continuing the discussion from New 14" MBP or M1 Air, Power vs Battery Life:

I have one too - a Windows 10-based Rube Goldberg contraption for neuroimaging work for undergrads. I would love to make it a container and have them either run it on their laptops, or in the lab with all the bits and bobs already installed and ready to go.

I just don’t know how to do that yet, or if it is possible.

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Are you trying to run Windows docker on Mac? To my understanding this is not possible. Only Linux containers are supported on Mac.

Edit: just to to be more specific, docker is different from other virtualization solutions. Docker just runs a lite container that includes just the software required, it depends on the host OS to run the software in isolation.
Still you can create complete Windows VM using VMWare which is free for personal use now.

Thanks for that info!

I have just been dreaming an an “appliance” that I could create with all software and data the undergrads would need in one package.

It’s possible it could be run on the Windows computers in the lab, which would take cared of the host OS problem, I think.

My other thinking is this would lighten the burden on our IT people, and light the burden of convincing them to install a bunch of software parts to make it all work.

Absolutely! Docker is amazing. I use it to build containers and run containers from others. If the software runs on both Windows and Linux you can have two different containers/images, one for each target OS.
You can also have docker for Windows and complete VM for Mac students.

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While of course there are exceptions, a good general rule,
VMs for GUI applications, and containers for terminal and server

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Another excellent point!

This would definitely be a VM then.