Larger issue: impossible to install Docker Desktop for Linux by following instructions in docs

[Johnrobmiller]

Is this a docs issue?

• [X] My issue is about the documentation content or website

Type of issue

Information is incorrect

Description

This is a larger issue. It is impossible to install Docker Desktop for Linux by following instructions in docs. When trying to install the .deb package, there is an error. The error tells the user that a package is missing.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 docker-desktop : Depends: docker-ce-cli but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So currently, the documetation is not working and users cannot use it to install Docker Desktop for linux.

Note, the suggestions in this SO overflow post did not work for me. I'm getting an additional error that there is not release file, therefore the repository cannot be securely downloaded. I am using Linux Mint. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72299444/docker-desktop-doesnt-install-saying-docker-ce-cli-not-installable

It sounds there are many things wrong with this documentation that need addressing for these docs to be reliable on most systems.

Location

https://docs.docker.com/desktop/install/ubuntu/

Suggestion

[anerb]

There is active "bleeding" in community sentiment from this issue. I also just spent 4-5 hours following (and re-following) the documentation for installing on my clean Linux distro. I had to reimage my machine and carefully rely on Timeshift to get through the necessary iterations. In my case it is Linux Mint, so I tried both Ubuntu and generic Linux.

In the end, it works, and it's actually not complicated. Once you know the correct answer, the documentation even reads well. However, until then, there is something in how the information is formatted and distributed that makes it quite an uphill challenge.

There is an excellent post from RogerBytes that echos this sentiment and he did the work of piecing together a linear solution.

I recommend that a link to his post is added to the official docs as a stop-gap solution (for Linux Mint) until the docs here can be updated/verified. After hour 2, I started having a background thought telling me "If this is how hard it is to get hello-world going, is Docker really a technology I want to put more time into? Is it going to be hours of trial-and-error on minor things throughout my Docker development experience?"

I understand that pointing to an outside source isn't great, but it's a good win if all the newcomers who happen to have a Linux Mint distro can get a friendlier introduction to starting with Docker (Desktop). The same advantage would apply to other popular distros, as the case may be.

Alternatively, I'd recommend a stronger warning that says "If you plan to develop with Docker (Desktop), use one of the officially tested distros, and avoid variants of them." Personally, I still suspect that warning applies and I'm probably going to clean my machine and just start fresh with Ubuntu so I can start my Docker development journey without hidden land mines.

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