Installing Docker

In this section, we will find out how to install Docker on Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. Next, we will run a sample hello-world image to verify the setup and check if everything works fine after the installation process.

Docker installation is quite straightforward, but there are some things you will need to focus on to make it run smoothly. We will point them out to make the installation process painless. You should know that Linux is the natural environment for Docker. If you run the container, it will run on a Linux kernel. If you run your container on Docker running on Linux, it will use the kernel of your own machine. This is not the case in macOS and Windows; that's the reason why the Linux kernel needs to be virtualized if you want to run a Docker container on these operating systems. The Docker engine, when running on macOS or MS Windows, will use the lightweight Linux distribution, made specifically to run Docker containers. It runs completely from RAM, using only several megabytes, and boots in a couple of seconds. After the installation of the main Docker package on macOS and Windows, the OS built-in virtualization engine will be used by default. Therefore, there are some special requirements for your machine. For the newest, native Docker setup, which is deeply integrated into native virtualization engines present in your operating system, you will need to have 64-bit Windows 10 professional or enterprise. For macOS, the newest Docker for Mac is a native Mac application developed from scratch, with a native user interface, integrated with OS X native virtualization, hypervisor framework, networking, and filesystem. The mandatory requirement will be Yosemite 10.10.3 or newer. Let's begin with installing on macOS.