Installing Docker

Docker ships in two flavors. Docker Desktop is a polished application for macOS and Windows that bundles the engine, CLI, a GUI, and a built-in Kubernetes. Docker Engine is the standalone daemon you install directly on Linux servers. Choose Desktop for local development on a Mac or PC, and Engine for production hosts and CI runners.

macOS and Windows: Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop runs the Linux-based Docker Engine inside a lightweight VM and exposes it through a native app.

1. Download the installer from docker.com/products/docker-desktop.
2. On macOS, drag Docker.app into /Applications. On Windows, run the .exe and accept the WSL 2 backend when prompted.
3. Launch Docker Desktop and wait for the whale icon in the menu bar / system tray to stop animating.

On Windows, Docker Desktop requires the WSL 2 backend. If the installer reports it is missing, run wsl --install in an elevated PowerShell, reboot, then start Docker Desktop again.

On Apple Silicon Macs, Docker runs ARM64 images natively and emulates amd64 images via Rosetta when needed. Prefer multi-architecture images for the best performance.

Linux: Docker Engine

On Linux you install the engine straight onto the host. The official convenience script handles repositories and dependencies across most distributions:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh

For Ubuntu/Debian using the package repository directly:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | \
  sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $VERSION_CODENAME) stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

To run Docker without sudo, add your user to the docker group, then log out and back in:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

The docker group grants root-equivalent access to the host. Only add trusted users to it.

Verifying the installation

First confirm the client and daemon are both present and talking to each other:

docker version

Output:

Client:
 Version:           27.1.1
 API version:       1.46
 Go version:        go1.21.12

Server: Docker Engine - Community
 Engine:
  Version:          27.1.1
  API version:      1.46 (minimum version 1.24)

If the Server block is missing, the daemon is not running — start Docker Desktop, or on Linux run sudo systemctl start docker.

Now run the canonical smoke test, which pulls a tiny image and runs it once:

docker run hello-world

Output:

Unable to find image 'hello-world:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/hello-world
Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

Seeing this message confirms the full pipeline works: the CLI reached the daemon, the daemon pulled an image from Docker Hub, created a container, and ran it. You are ready to start working with images and containers.