Docker

Installation

To run docker, install the docker engine

• Arch-based systems

  sudo pacman -S docker docker-compose
  

• Debian/Ubuntu

• REHL/Fedora

and start/enable the daemon

sudo systemctl enable --now docker.service

Basic Introduction to Docker

Cool applications

Windows Virtual Machine

Unfortunately, you will need Windows at some point and we are sometimes lazy enough to spend 5 hours debugging a not-decently made alternative instead of rebooting into a Windows partition.

Just shove a Windows VM into a docker container and call it when you need it. Or just remove it completely when you get tired of it.

Here is a tutorial from WinApps on how to set it up using docker or podman.

WinApps

WinApps is a way of running Windows applications on Linux. While wine uses a translation layer of instructions, winapps uses a VM in a docker container and streams specific applications to you DE via Remote Desktop, making it so that you can use a regular Win application as if it were native.

See the WinApps repository for more information.

The obvious downside is that you need enough resources to keep the VM active. The benefit is that you can run basically any Windows application this way.

Stirling PDF

Although you can run a Stirling PDF server locally without issues. It has way too many dependencies that you might not need in your system. For this case, it is simpler to just shove it in a Docker Container

Follow their Docker Install guide for more information.

MATLAB

MATLAB is one of those “programming languages” that you usually use against your will. It can be either very easy or very difficult to install it on Linux, and their documentation is misleading at best when they never mention all the required dependencies that you always need to look manually in a painfully slow iterative process.

Browser Image

Turns out there is an Official MATLAB image on DockerHub that contrary to their installer, actually works. Here is a basic compose.yaml file.

services:
  matlab:
    image: mathworks/matlab:r2025a
    container_name: matlab-desktop
    ports:
      - "8000:8888"
    volumes:
      - ./matlab-files:/home/matlab/Documents/MATLAB:rw
    command: -browser
    restart: unless-stopped

then

docker compose up

This will make MATLAB available on http://localhost:8000.

To run in the background, add the -d flag to the docker-compose command.

You will need to login to your MathWorks account for license validation.

Due to the nature of the container, and that I haven’t found a solution. You will need to login to your MathWorks account everytime the container is freshly launched.

The browser version of the container does not plot interactive features. For this, follow the VNC subsection.

VNC version

If you want a more capable VNV version of the same container, simply make a few modifications to the compose file. We will use the same mounted points so that they can work in combo.

services:
  matlab:
    image: mathworks/matlab:r2025a
    container_name: matlab-vnc
    ports:
      - "5901:5901"   # VNC port
      - "6080:6080"   # noVNC browser access
    shm_size: "2g"
    tty: true
    stdin_open: true
    volumes:
      - ./matlab-files:/home/matlab/Documents/MATLAB:rw
    command: -vnc
    restart: unless-stopped

Allocate more or less resources with the shm_size and cpus flags.

Launch the container

docker compose --file=./compose-vnc.yaml up -d

You now can access the VNC version at http://localhost:6080. It will look like XFCE with a MATLAB icon on the desktop.

The default password is matlab.

Optionally, install a VNC Client, I recommend remmina as it has proper scaling for HiDPI monitors

sudo pacman -S remmina gtk-vnc

Then connect to localhost:5901 from remmina.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I run rootless docker?

Any action from this could cause unperceived vulnerabilities. Use at your own caution and risk.

Create the docker group

sudo groupadd docker

and add your current user (or any user) to the group

sudo gpasswd -a $USER docker