There are a few things I want to host that are very firmly “docker only” images. I get docker, I understand why it exists but I can’t get into it. I have had docker and portainer running in the past but found it cumbersome (portainer updates were a minor annoyance, and updating docker images seemed “wrong”) but I can’t get away from it.
I happened across CasaOS earlier which sort of looked like something that would help, then looked at alternatives to this and saw someone suggest Cosmo which says it needs installing on docker so I got confused again!
Is there anything that’s truly worth using to make installing/managing/updating docker images simple or is it just more complicated in the long run?
For the record I do have ESXi and countless VMs, I find spinning up a VM simple and it suffices for all my needs apart from a couple of specific things (like a Google Photos replacement). I don’t really want to learn docker just to use Immich!
Sorry, but this sounds a bit: “I’d like to eat this piece of cake, but also still have it available to me when I’m done.”
There are front-ends that can make docker apps easier to manage, like CasaOS. The tradeoff for ease of use is flexibility compared to something like Portainer or the CLI. CasaOS’s app library (for instance) frequently has out-of-date versions of apps, and if their default configuration doesn’t make sense for your purposes, you’re still going to have it delve deeper (whether in the CasaOS UI or another tool) to customize things to your needs.
That’s pretty much a given with any tool - if you don’t want to deal with how it works, then you need to accept the default configuration and cross your fingers that it works for your purposes.
And you’re still not going to get away from the fundamentals of how docker works, if you find them troublesome for some reason. Updating a docker app with something like CasaOS is doing the same thing it would be with Portainer or the command line. I’m not quite sure what seems “wrong” about it to you, but it would be “wrong” in the same way no matter what front end you use.