5 of the coolest things you can run on Docker

Thanks to its ultra-portable, secure, and lightweight containers, Docker remains one of the most popular tools in the home lab community. If you’re even remotely into running services on your own hardware, you’ve probably heard about the Docker images for Plex, Nextcloud, Nginx, Bitwarden, and Home Assistant images.

However, the endless recesses of the Docker Hub house thousands of images, ranging from somewhat useful to downright insane. So, we’ve put together a list containing five of the most wacky yet useful apps you can run inside Docker containers.

5 Video games

And game servers for popular multiplayer titles

Veteran self-hosted enthusiasts may already be aware that it’s possible to host game servers inside Linux containers. However, you can just as easily run certain titles from the DOS era within Docker.

With the original Doom capable of running on practically everthing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the legendary game is playable inside Docker. Likewise, you’ll find Docker images for QuakeJS, Minesweeper, SimCity Classic, and a handful of other titles from the bygone era. And that’s before you include all the game servers you can host within these lightweight contains!

4 Kasm Workspaces

To run useful services inside isolated Docker containers

If you’ve been following my articles, you may already recognize Kasm Workspaces. Designed to help you access popular desktop apps from secure containers, Kasm Workspaces is as amazing for businesses and cyber security enthusiasts as it is for the average tinkerer.

By default, the Docker version of the Kasm Workspaces image includes an Ubuntu GUI, which you can access from your browser, and there are quite a lot of services you can run inside this container.

3 LLMs and image generators

Remember to pass your GPU to the container

Generative AI may be the buzzword of the year, but it takes quite a lot of firepower to run LLMs and AI-powered image generators on your local hardware. So, it would make sense if you were surprised to see the Docker images of Ollama and Stable Diffusion on this list.

Contrary to what you may believe, it’s not only possible to run generative AI models inside Docker containers, but you can also experience rock-solid performance once you set up GPU passthrough! Sure, it’s a bit more complex than running them bare-metal. However, configuring them inside containers is a fun project that has the added benefit of ensuring you don’t break anything on your host system.

2 EmulatorJS

To emulate games inside your browser

If you thought self-hosting games with Docker was wild, you have to check out EmulatorJS. Designed to run retro games inside browsers, EmulatorJS is a fun tool you can deploy on your local Docker machine to play timeless classics straight from your favorite browser.

Of course, EmulatorJS has a rather limited number of supported consoles, and you won’t be able to emulate titles for even the most remotely modern gaming systems. But if you’re a fan of the old-school Atari, Commodore, and other retro consoles, you’ll have a blast experimenting with the EmulatorJS Docker image.

1 macOS

Not the most stable version, but still a fun project

Even on a bare-metal setup, getting a Hackintosh up and running can be quite a hassle. Having previously set up macOS on my Proxmox server, I was quite intrigued to find out if it’s possible to run Apple’s proprietary desktop operating system inside a Docker container.

As luck would have it, you can even find working Docker images for the more recent macOS variants. Unfortunately, the original repo for said images is currently broken following a recent DMCA takedown from Apple, meaning you’ll have to search for mirrors on your own. Plus, getting everything to run properly can involve a lot of troubleshooting. Nevertheless, it’s a cool project if you’re as addicted to tinkering as I am.

Running unique containers on your Docker machine

Those were five of unique images on Docker Hub, but there are a few others for those willing to run some wacky containerized apps. If you want to get into nested containerization shenanigans, you might want to check out the official Docker image that you can run inside another container. In case you’re more of a Linux enthusiast, you’ll be glad to know that most of the popular distros have their own Docker images, which you can easily pull and run within containers.

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