Been there, now I have over 12 containers running h24 on an old spare laptop with everything exposed via traefik (reverse proxy), self-signed CA, local DNS...... what a ride ^^'.

The best advice and thats what helped me to get going, is to watch/follow some youtube videos about docker and how to expose your first container locally, so you get the general gist on how it works.

2 years ago, NetworkChuck introduced me to docker container. Not saying he's the best youtuber to get you into docker and learning and stuff, but it's a GOOD starting point :).

There is also Christian Lempa, Tech world with nana, who also will you give you some good pointer with docker and docker compose.

Good luck !

how the hell do I find docker

Type “docker” in terminal and hit enter. Since it’s installed, your system will likely recognize it as a command and populate a help menu for you. You’ll want to visit docker’s website for a full manual.

Docker is a ~~developer~~* tool, not really something you should be using without some technical knowledge, or at least some experience in the terminal. It's purely a terminal application, so you just type "docker" in the terminal to use it. You can also type "man docker" to view the manual (which shows arguments and command you can use) but again, that won't help much without some prior knowledge.

The things you're trying to use look like self-hosted web servers, which is a lot to set up for someone who's new to the terminal. I won't stop you if you want, but be warned. I'd recommend using something simpler like cozy, which you should be able to find and download in the software store.

*Edit: it's not only a developer tool, it's used for deployment as well. I lumped the two together. It's still a tool made for people with more familiarity using the terminal though.

Ok, so I don't know the specifics, this might not be entirely accurate, but this is a general step-by-step guide for Debian based distros like Mint.

Install docker

The first thing you need to do is install docker, this can be done via whatever GUI you use for a package manager or via the terminal using sudo apt install docker (I'm not sure docker is the name of the package, I'm just guessing, you can do an apt search docker to see what's available)

Add yourself to dockers

This is likely not needed on Mint, but just in case your user should be in the docker group, i.e. run sudo gpasswd -a docker. I'm almost sure Mint does this by default.

Enable docker systemd

This also might not be needed, again I'm almost sure Mint does this for you when you install docker, but just in case the command is sudo systemctl enable docker

Reboot

Because there have been changes to your user groups you need to relogin, easier to reboot.

use docker

Now you have a system with docker, you can test this by running the following command docker run hello-world, if you see a bunch of text that contains "Hello from docker" docker is working.

setup a docker-compose file

Create a folder, and in that folder create a text file called docker-compose.yaml in that file. This file will tell docker what you want to run, for example to have Nextcloud (which is an awesome self-hosted drive alternative. I'm not going to teach you the specific services you want, you can figure those out by looking at their page on the linuxserver page or something) you can look here https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/nextcloud on how to write your docker-compose file, for example you could write:

services:
  nextcloud:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
    container_name: nextcloud
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./data:/data
    ports:
      - 8080:80
      - 443:443
    restart: unless-stopped

Then open a terminal on that folder and run docker compose up -d after that is done open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080 and begin using Nextcloud.

Is there a Linux for people who are deeply entrenched in how Windows works

How Windows works is different I think?

I’m not above googling command lines that I can copy and paste but I’ve spent HOURS trying to figure this out and have gotten no where…

You don't need.

I heard you are using a debian-based distro, can you read the man pages for apt?

Then use apt to find docker, and get it.

Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?

It is not installed in the terminal. It is installed on the system, ON DISK!

docker should be installed on /usr/bin. It is on PATH. Type docker and see what happen. If not, try searching on /usr/bin (on BSDs third party software are separated from base, so docker should be installed on /usr/local/bin)

And the docker service should be started, if not. Use the fucking systemctl to start it. The service name should be docker, if I recall correctly

Docker does not have a desktop app. You're supposed to install either Docker desktop or Podman desktop (which also supports Docker).

AI can be of great help when learning docker, as it is genuinely super confusing. You don't "find" docker, it's a terminal program that you interact with... From the terminal.

I'm gonna get A LOT of hate for this, but check out Warp terminal. It has a really nice GUI for configuration and really nice autocomplete for commands.

Try a more managed and out-of-the-box solution first, then work your way down to the commandline. I'd recommend one of the NAS solutions like openmediavault (if they still do docker) or https://cockpit-project.org/

or Docker for Desktop or podman.io

(maybe lxc containers with proxmox or unraid)

Docker can be really confusing, but IMO being able to add and remove software without having changes made throughout your system is well worth the effort.

podman is better but thats just my opinion btw