This guide teaches how to use Rootlesskit and Docker to install a Rootless Docker and run Docker containers in Rootless mode. The setup works for Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.), and Raspberry PI Docker allows you to create Rootless containers. This means, Docker Engine will create and run these containers in Rootless mode. They will run as unprivileged to the user namespaces creating them.
Docker is available for installation from the standard Ubuntu repositories, but those packages are often outdated. To ensure you get the latest stable version, we’ll install Docker from the official Docker repository.
At the time of writing, the Docker repository provides packages for the following Ubuntu versions:
- Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing)
- Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky)
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)