Install Docker on Ubuntu 26.04 (the right way, with the docker-group truth)

The wrong way to install Docker on Ubuntu is the one that looks easiest: sudo apt install docker.io . That package exists, it installs, and it runs a container. It is also whatever version happened to be frozen into the archive when 26.04 was cut, it lags the real releases by months, and it ships without the Compose and Buildx plugins you will want by the end of the week. Use Docker's own apt repository instead, and this is the post I keep open so I do not re-derive the repo setup from memory each time. This is short on purpose. The steps are the official ones, and the only place worth slowing down is step 5, where adding yourself to the docker group quietly hands out root. That tradeoff is the part most guides skip, and it is the one thing here actually worth reading twice. TL;DR Remove any distro docker.io / containerd packages, add Docker's GPG key and the deb822 .sources repo, then sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin . Verify with sudo docker run hello-world . Add yourself to the docker group to drop the sudo (it is root-equivalent, more below). Prerequisites Ubuntu 26.04 (Resolute Raccoon), server or desktop, on amd64 or arm64 . A user with sudo. If you are still on root, create a sudo user first . Outbound HTTPS to download.docker.com . 1. Remove the distro Docker packages first Ubuntu ships its own docker.io , docker-compose , and containerd packages, and any of them will fight the official ones over the same files and the same containerd socket. Clear them out before you add Docker's repo. This is safe on a fresh box because there is nothing to lose yet; on a box that already ran the distro Docker, it removes the packages but leaves your images and volumes in /var/lib/docker alone. sudo apt remove $( dpkg --get-selections docker.io docker-compose docker-compose-v2 docker-doc podman-docker containerd runc | cut -f1 ) The dpkg --get-selections wrapper is just so the command does not error out on pac