Docker comes to openSUSE
Docker is more popular in enterprise data centers and clouds now than ice-cream on a hot summer day in a day-care center. So, it comes as no surprise that openSUSE, SUSE's community Linux distribution, has adopted Docker as well.
This comes after other Linux powers such as Red Hat and Ubuntu picked up using Docker to get more server application bang from the data center buck. In addition, SUSE itself adopted Docker for its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) earlier this year.
Henne Vogelsang, a SUSE developer, announced that "Docker containers for our latest openSUSE release, 13.1 are now available." The official openSUSE Docker containers are available on the Docker Hub.
While businesses love Docker because it enables them to place more server applications on the same hardware than virtualization allows, developers love it for another reason. As Vogelsang said, "Docker has been so successful because it makes it easy to harness the power of containers and at the same time it provides two important features: a developer oriented work flow to manage containers’ life cycle and a set of collaborative functionalities."
He continued, "Managing Docker images shares analogies with version control systems used to track the evolution of source code. Containers are stored on a central repository. Users can download them using the 'pull' command. They can 'diff' a running container to see which changes have been made. They can fork containers and 'push' their derived work back to the Docker Hub."
This is indeed a lot like a VCS. Unlike a normal VCS, which is all about a project's specific code, Docker images contain everything — the application and its libraries — that a user needs to run an application on any supported platform.
Much of the credit for openSUSE supporting Docker must go to Flavio Castelli, a SUSE software engineer who worked hard on bringing the popular container technology to this Linux distribution.
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