First, update your existing list of packages:

sudo apt update

Install a few prerequisite packages which let apt use packages over HTTPS:

sudo apt install ca-certificates curl gnupg

Add the GPG key for the official Docker repository to your system using the modern keyring method:

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

Add the Docker repository to APT sources. This command automatically detects your Ubuntu version:

echo \ "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Update the package database with the Docker packages from the newly added repo:

sudo apt update

Verify that you are about to install from the Docker repository instead of the default Ubuntu repository:

apt-cache policy docker-ce

Finally, install Docker:

sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Note: The installation includes docker-buildx-plugin and docker-compose-plugin which provide modern Docker Compose functionality. You can use docker compose (without the hyphen) instead of the older standalone docker-compose command.

Docker should now be installed, the daemon started, and the process enabled to start on boot. Check that it’s running:

sudo systemctl status docker

The output should be similar to the following, showing that the service is active and running:

If you want to avoid typing sudo whenever you run the docker command, add your username to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

To apply the new group membership, log out of the server and back in, or type the following:

su - ${USER}

You will be prompted to enter your user’s password to continue.

Confirm that your user is now added to the docker group by typing:

groups

If you need to add a user to the docker group that you’re not logged in as, declare that username explicitly using:

sudo usermod -aG docker username

To check whether you can access and download images from Docker Hub, type:

docker run hello-world