If it won’t work in a docker container, I need a real server anyway.

I keep seeing Docker being mentioned everywhere, but I can’t seem to figure out what it is.

maybe I’m just dumb or my Google Fu isn’t as good as I thought, but can you offer an explanation? is it just virtualization software?

Apparently not cause it’s super easy to find. Searching “docker” on Google returned it as the top result for me. it’s a container platform. You have code and it needs somewhere to run. That could be on your computer but that’s ineffective at handling package conflicts. So you run it in a container. This means you can install the specific versions of dependencies that the code needs and you’re least likely to run into conflicts. You can also run multiple instances of a program regardless of whether it would allow it because each instance runs in its own container. Blissfully unaware of the others
Docker: Accelerated Container Application Development

Docker is a platform designed to help developers build, share, and run container applications. We handle the tedious setup, so you can focus on the code.

Docker