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.

  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    6 hours ago

    Please don’t use Portainer.

    • It kidnaps your compose files and stores them all in its own grubby little lair
    • It makes it basically impossible to interact with docker from the command line once it has its claws into your setup
    • It treats console output - like error messages - as an annoyance, showing a brief snippet on the screen for 0.3 seconds before throwing the whole message in the shredder.

    If you want a GUI, Dockge is fantastic. It plays nice with your existing setup, it does a much better job of actually helping out when you’ve screwed up your compose file, it converts run commands to compose files for you, and it gets the fuck out of the way when you decide to ignore it and use the command line anyway, because it respects your choices and understands that it’s here to help your workflow, not to direct your workflow.

    Edit to add: A great partner for Dockge is Dozzle, which gives you a nice unified view for logs and performance data for your stacks.

    I also want to note that both Dockge and Dozzle are primarily designed for homelab environments and home users. If we’re talking professional, large scale usage, especially docker swarms and the like, you really need to get comfortable with the CLI. If you absolutely must have a GUI in an environment like that, Portainer is your only option, but it’s still not one I can recommend.

    • 𝓢𝓮𝓮𝓙𝓪𝔂𝓔𝓶𝓶@lemmy.procrastinati.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      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.

      • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        20 minutes ago

        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.