Installing Docker
Install Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS, or Docker Engine on Linux, then verify it works.
docker run hello-worldBefore you can build and run containers, you need Docker installed on your machine.
Docker Desktop
On Windows and macOS, install Docker Desktop. It bundles the Docker Engine, the command-line tool, Docker Compose, and a graphical dashboard.
Docker Engine on Linux
On Linux you can install Docker Engine directly using your distribution's package manager, or the convenience script from Docker.
Verify the installation
After installing, open a terminal and run docker run hello-world. Docker downloads a tiny test image and runs it, printing a friendly confirmation message.
Example
# Install Docker Engine on Ubuntu/Debian (convenience script)
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
# Verify the install
docker --version
docker run hello-worldWhen to use it
- A developer installs Docker Desktop on macOS to build and test containerized apps locally before pushing to a Linux server.
- A DevOps engineer installs Docker Engine on an Ubuntu server to run production containers without a desktop GUI.
- A Windows developer enables WSL2 integration in Docker Desktop to get native Linux container performance.
More examples
Install Docker on Ubuntu
Uses Docker's official install script on Ubuntu and grants the current user permission to run Docker without sudo.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USERVerify installation
Checks both the Docker Engine and Compose plugin versions, then runs a quick smoke test.
docker --version
docker compose version
docker run --rm hello-worldConfigure Docker daemon options
A /etc/docker/daemon.json snippet that sets log rotation and file-descriptor limits for all containers.
{
"log-driver": "json-file",
"log-opts": { "max-size": "10m", "max-file": "3" },
"default-ulimits": { "nofile": { "Hard": 64000, "Name": "nofile", "Soft": 64000 } }
}
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