I often see people mention the Portainer project and how it’s useful, but I never hear any reason to use it other than as a more user friendly front end to service management.
So is there any particular feature or reason to use portainer over docker’s CLI? Or is it simply a method of convenience?
This isn’t only strictly for self hosting, but I figure people here would know better.
Just because something doesn’t fit your use case doesn’t make it a terrible product. Portainer isn’t meant to complement managing docker via CLI. It’s meant to be the management interface.
If you want to manage your environment via CLI, I agree, don’t use Portainer. If you’re content (or prefer) a GUI, Portainer is a solid option. Esp if you have multiple hosts or want to manage more than just the compose stack. Last time I checked Dockge doesn’t do either.
The thing is, those poor design decisions have nothing to do with those features, i claim that every feature could be implemented without “holding the compose files hostage”.
Btw. dockge does support connecting to another docker dockge instance.
Yes, this is exactly my point. I think I’ve laid out very clearly how Portainer’s shortcomings are far more than just “It’s not for your use case.”
Portainer is designed, from the ground up to trap you in an ecosystem. The choices they made aren’t because it’s necessary to do those things that way in order to be a usable Docker GUI. It’s solely because they do not want you to be able to easily move away from their platform once you’re on it.
Only by exposing the docker socket. And it doesn’t support managing network or volumes.