Installing the required software with Docker

Docker is the most widely used framework for implementing operating system-level virtualization. This technology allows you to have an independent container: a layer that is lighter than a virtual machine but still allows you to compartmentalize software. This mostly isolates all processes, making it feel like each container is a virtual machine. Containers will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 14, Cloud Basics.Docker works quite well at both extremes of the development spectrum: it’s an expedient way to set up the content of this book for learning purposes and could become your platform of choice for deploying your applications in complex environments.Conda and Docker are key tools to help maintain software compatibility and reproducibility across different systems and libraries. We’ll discuss reproducibility more in Chapter 15, Workflow Systems.

Note

This recipe is an alternative to the previous recipe. Normally, if...