What I like about Docker: reliability.

I use Docker for 3 distinct purposes at the moment; work, smart home, media.

2 of those can be really frustrating if things don't work 100% as expected.

Today, the power flickered out while I was working. To get back up and running? Turn on the power to my desktop. Simple. Docker started without the need for me to login, and all of my containers came back up.

My work laptop didn't even notice that the server died and my smart home software was about 95% functional. My smart home had 2 components fail because they rely explicitly on internet connections and, as the power in the whole house went down, it meant my router hadn't finished reconnecting to the internet.

The two components which went down were driving widgets for weather which I can check without my smart home. And the second was a cloud connected smart device which I could have checked from the app even more quickly.

The rest of my devices are all available within the same network. So, even without internet, it was able to talk to my Hue and Ikea lights and other integrations. And, if I really wanted, I could even resolve this by adding some health checks for the network to delay startup until there is a valid internet connection.

I've got 19-21 containers running during the work day. The fact that all I needed to do was hit the power button is pretty amazing. And considering that the next phase of my smart home solution is to move this onto R-Pis at some point, those guys just start up as soon as they have power. So, when I make that switch, the problem will resolve itself.

Yes, there are ways that I can schedule all of this to start when Linux starts even without containers. But Docker will even restart them if they fail while they are running. Add that to the other benefits like how much easier containers are to cleanly install and uninstall and you have a winner for me.