Can I run a Ubuntu 16 Docker image on a Ubuntu 18 host? Will I need to install hardware drivers already available to the host?

Question

We have some Docker images built from Ubuntu 16.04 base image, and we've been running them on hosts running Ubuntu 16.04; these hosts are laptop computers from different makes. However, we have had some problems finding drivers and we wind up installing them manually instead of having a smooth and seamless Ubuntu installation.

We think that it could be an option to use Ubuntu 18.04 as the OS in the hosts, as this newer versions has better support for newer PCs.

The question is: suppose that the host running Ubuntu 18.04 has "built-in" drivers for, say, the WiFi card, but those are not automatically available for Ubuntu 16.04. Will we need to anyways install those drivers manually in the Ubuntu 16.04 Docker image or will it just run OK since they are correctly installed in the host?

I cannot get it from Docker's own system overview.

Answer 1

The docker container will be abstracted from the way that your host accesses the internet/network, and it should work fine / not care about if it's wifi or not/etc.

You can happily run ubuntu docker containers on docker on top of windows, other linux variants (e.g. centos), mac, or anything else without issues. So, this should pose no difficulty in practice.

Answer 2

Docker containers do not use hardware drivers. A containers network connection is abstracted by Docker bridge.

I highly recommend you seek some free tutorial videos or check out Linux Academy to better understand Docker. I promise it will give you great insights.

Answer 3

docker is a framework to run containers isolated independent of operational system under of you image in use. In theory you can run normally without problems. will depend on what you intend to run in the container.