Well I typically write my own dockerfiles so I have a good understanding of how a lot of software works, I’m sure others do too. It has increased the reproducibility of my stack, my understanding of dependencies and the reliability. Docker is not just docker compose up
Yeah the containers can be large and usually will lead to large downloads. I have tried bubble wrap and raw chroots but the tooling around docker is a lot better. The change to php8 was a pain, hence why I went docker. An alpine base with clearly defined deps gives me a container that is thin enough but I can move from a Gentoo box to arch for free. This, for my use case, is great.
I put everything in a docker container and it’s been, mostly, a net positive. You may laugh at me but it works very well for my use case.
Overall, net positive. I recommend everybody try it and use where appropriate.
This isn’t a religion and subscribing to dogma for want of suckless stacks won’t always be the best path to the end goal.
However, you’re right, docker may not always be the best call and it may promote bloated garbage.