Registries are one of the key components that make working with containers, primarily Docker, so appealing to the masses. A registry hosts images that are downloaded and run on hosts in a container engine. A container is simply a running instance of a specific image.
Think of an image as a ready-to-go package, like an MSI on Microsoft Windows or an RPM on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I won’t go into the details of how registries work here, but if you want to learn more, this article is a great read.
Instead, what I’d like to do in this post is highlight some of the container registries that currently remain under the radar. While the big-name registries are already familiar to most people who work with Docker, there are smaller registries worth considering, too, when you are deciding where to host your images.
The Well-Known Registries
First, though, let me identify the big-name registries, so that it’s clear what I’m comparing the under-the-radar registries to. Continue reading
