Installing Docker on Ubuntu 16.04

17 Nov 2018

I've had reason to start playing with containers on Ubuntu. The first step was to get docker installed and working on my laptop.

1. I needed to add the GPG key for Docker to my system.

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

2. Next I needed to add the Docker repository to APT and refresh the package database.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

sudo apt-get update

3. Finally, install Docker:

sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce

After about 30 seconds the install was completed. I verified that everything installed correctly and was active by running the command:

sudo systemctl status docker

Docker needs to run with elevated privileges. Rather than typing sudo before each command, I added my user account to the docker user group:

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
su - ${USER}

Running the following command will verify that it worked correctly:

id -nG

todd adm sudo lpadmin sambashare docker

Pretty straightforward to install a piece of software as powerful as Docker. So far, I'm loving the change to Linux.