I havent used docker but my understanding is that dockerhub hosts docker images which are essentially just text files?
Would that be something that cud just be migrated to another platform easily or does dockerhub do a lot of other things too?
dockerfile is a text file spec on how to build a docker image.
a container image (analogous to a VM snapshot) is built from a dockerfile.
but dockers hub contains the actual images (that run into MBs and GBs) not just dockerfiles.
most dockerfiles don't build an image from scratch. they start with a "FROM" keyword that references an existing pre-built image and then adds some layers of files and configuration on top.
everytime you build a containerized app, your build scripts first pull down the latest pre-built base image referenced by your app's dockerfile.
so a image registry like docker hub is core and essential for thousands of build pipelines and automation that run across thousands of companies globally.
there are some alternatives like Amazon ECR, and private registries hosted by big companies on their own.
but a lot of projects and pipelines still depend on public images of commonly used ones like Linux flavours and distros maintained by various teams.
Dockerfiles are text files. Docker images are entire OS file system snapshots (not exactly but close enough) built from those Dockerfiles. A single one can be hundreds of MBs or even multiple GBs in size.
