Ubuntu: Setup & Install Docker

This is more for my reference than anything else, but here are the steps to install Docker on Ubuntu.

Cleaning up old versions

if we have any old/existing versions of Docker installed, we should remove them first:

sudo apt-get purge docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin docker-ce-rootless-extras

Installing Docker

Now we can install Docker by following these steps:

# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

If you use an Ubuntu derivative distro, such as Linux Mint, you may need to use UBUNTU_CODENAME instead of VERSION_CODENAME.

Install the latest version of Docker Engine and containerd

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Check installed version

docker -v

Check Docker Compose

docker compose

Use Docker without sudo

To avoid using sudo with every Docker command, add your user to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

You’ll need to log out then back in to apply this change.