Docker's community edition (CE) is free and is very well suited to developers and small teams – it's what we'll use in this book.
If Docker is to be used throughout a company, it is better to use Docker Enterprise, which is not free. The documentation is at: https://docs.docker.com/ee/supported-platforms/.
Docker is a cross-platform tool that can be installed on Windows, Linux, or macOS and is also natively present on some cloud providers, such as AWS and Azure.
To operate, Docker needs the following elements:
- The Docker client: This allows you to perform various operations on the command line.
- The Docker daemon: This is Docker's engine.
- Docker Hub: This is a public (with a free option available) registry of Docker images.
Before installing Docker, we will first create an account on Docker Hub.
