At work I use kubernetes and quite like that (upgrading containers without downtime FTE), but I didn’t bother trying to set up the infrastructure myself. Some argue, it’s not with the efford for self hosting, I dunno.

What I do like to use is Dockge, to keep docker but also keep your sanity. It even offers a single button for “docker compose pull”, which is great of you don’t have to many compose files / stacks. Combine with a simple shell script to batch pull/build all stacks in one go, plus some backup solution, and it’s actually nice to use and does all that I need. I love CLIs, but I’ve had situations where the GUI came in very handy.

#! /bin/bash
# note: this will update and START all dockge stacks, even if you stopped them before
shopt -s nullglob
for proj in /opt/dockge /opt/stacks/*/; do
  echo "> $proj"
  docker compose -f "$proj/compose.yaml" up --pull always --build --detach
  echo ""
done

I guess some really don’t

It’s great until you unmute it