Last night, I tried to use a docker container on the new Pi system that I've been able to use on other systems without issue.
This experience was pretty much a nightmare.
I was able to install Docker without issue and the 'hello world' container worked fine.
When I tried to run a Wordpress container, there were cascading issue. Granted, I know that the Pi runs on the ARM chipset, so I did have to make adjustments for that, which wasn't all that difficult.
The main issue I had probably related to the Pi OS. There were things that the OS were blocking.
First, while I was able to get the Worpdress container to run, I couldn't connect to it intially. In fact, I couldn't reach the internet, using curl or any other browser client. Apparently, curl is kinda weird on the Pi OS, as it requires me to use a different service port than 80. Since I wasn't using port 80 or any other service that was configured to use port 80, I tried to use port 80 for the Wordpress container, which broke some things relating to curl and routing. It ended up taking me like 6 hours to determine the issue (was using ChatGPT to assist - ChatGBT kept repeating repair steps that weren't working, until I forced it to look for other issues.
At 4 AM this morning, I finally was able to reach the container using curl, Chromium, and Firefox, but was still experiencing connection drops when trying to use Duckduckgo. I also noticed several other connection drops (some Wordpress plugins requires backend callbacks to 'home' using curl - those started breaking again.
Later in the day, I checked the container again and noticed that the problem routes that I'd removed had been readded by Pi OS, reverting my work.
I got fed up and decided to start from scratch with another OS. I chose Ubuntu, since I'm already familiar with it. The only wildcard is that this Pi system is still powered by ARM, so I might still run into some new things...I'll just have to be prepared for any chipset-related issues that may occur, but I trust Ubuntu more than Pi OS at this point.
Ubuntu 25.10 is installed on the system's internal SSD. I used the Pi boot options to reinstall the OS...that's a cool option, but I wish it would also give the option to use wireless connections instead of ethernet, as I had to jump through hoops to ensure I could use the ethernet where the Pi system is currently located.
As well, I wasn't prepared for the new OS install to take 45 minutes.
As frustrated as I was, it's all a learning experience for me. As well, there's less frustration in reinstalling when I'm using a Pi.
I'd post some of my ChatGPT session, but it was messy and an hours-long chat.
I'll keep you all updated on my progress with Ubuntu on the Pi.
UPDATE (1/2/2026): Yeah, I already deployed a docker instance of Wordpress in Ubuntu, on the Pi. I had none of the issues I had last night with deploying the same .yml file on the Pi OS, beyond another issue with changing code so that the images being pulled supported ARM. The two experiences were very different.
