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Install (ubuntu)

OS requirements

To install Docker Engine, you need the 64-bit version of one of these Ubuntu versions:

  • Ubuntu Lunar 23.04
  • Ubuntu Kinetic 22.10
  • Ubuntu Jammy 22.04 (LTS)
  • Ubuntu Focal 20.04 (LTS)

Docker Engine is compatible with x86_64 (or amd64), armhf, arm64, and s390x architectures.

Uninstall old versions

Before you can install Docker Engine, you must first make sure that any conflicting packages are uninstalled.

Distro maintainers provide an unofficial distributions of Docker packages in APT. You must uninstall these packages before you can install the official version of Docker Engine.

The unofficial packages to uninstall are:

  • docker.io
  • docker-compose
  • docker-doc
  • podman-docker

Moreover, Docker Engine depends on containerd and runc. Docker Engine bundles these dependencies as one bundle: containerd.io. If you have installed the containerd or runc previously, uninstall them to avoid conflicts with the versions bundled with Docker Engine.

Run the following command to uninstall all conflicting packages:

$ for pkg in docker.io docker-doc docker-compose podman-docker containerd runc; do sudo apt-get remove $pkg; done

apt-get might report that you have none of these packages installed.

Images, containers, volumes, and networks stored in /var/lib/docker/ aren’t automatically removed when you uninstall Docker. If you want to start with a clean installation, and prefer to clean up any existing data, read the uninstall Docker Engine section.

Installation methods

You can install Docker Engine in different ways, depending on your needs:

Install using the apt repository

Before you install Docker Engine for the first time on a new host machine, you need to set up the Docker repository. Afterward, you can install and update Docker from the repository.

Set up the repository

  1. Update the apt package index and install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS:

    $ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg

  2. Add Docker’s official GPG key:

    $ 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

  3. Use the following command to set up the repository:

    $ 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

    Note

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

Install Docker Engine

  1. Update the apt package index:

    $ sudo apt-get update

  2. Install Docker Engine, containerd, and Docker Compose.



    To install the latest version, run:

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

  3. Verify that the Docker Engine installation is successful by running the hello-world image.

    $ sudo docker run hello-world

    This command downloads a test image and runs it in a container. When the container runs, it prints a confirmation message and exits.

You have now successfully installed and started Docker Engine.

Tip

Receiving errors when trying to run without root?

The docker user group exists but contains no users, which is why you’re required to use sudo to run Docker commands. Continue to Linux postinstall to allow non-privileged users to run Docker commands and for other optional configuration steps.

Upgrade Docker Engine

To upgrade Docker Engine, follow the installation instructions, choosing the new version you want to install.

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