I’m a retired Unix admin. It was my job from the early '90s until the mid '10s. I’ve kept somewhat current ever since by running various machines at home. So far I’ve managed to avoid using Docker at home even though I have a decent understanding of how it works - I stopped being a sysadmin in the mid '10s, I still worked for a technology company and did plenty of “interesting” reading and training.
It seems that more and more stuff that I want to run at home is being delivered as Docker-first and I have to really go out of my way to find a non-Docker install.
I’m thinking it’s no longer a fad and I should invest some time getting comfortable with it?
My vote: not if you can avoid it.
For casual home admins docker containers are mysterious black boxes that are difficult to configure and even worse to inspect and debug.
I prefer lightweight VMs hosting one or more services on an OS I understand and control (in my case Debian stable), and only use docker images as a way to quickly try out something new before commiting time to deploying it properly.
I found they were easier to config. somebody has a yaml file or via portainer to setup ports etc. and you can always bash into a docker to lurk inside the black box
I think they’re easier to debug as well IMO. Logs can be spread out across the filesystem on something like a Debian VM. Whereas with Docker they’re all in one feed you can easily follow the output from, with different services colour-coded. You can also easily increase the verbosity by editing the compose file.