Originally published on docker.learnio.dev — part of the Docker fundamentals course. View this lesson on the original site.

Use a tiny smoke test instead of guessing

Installing Docker is not the same as proving it works. A short verification loop gives you a better baseline than just seeing the app icon open.

Run:

docker version
docker info
docker run --rm hello-world

What each command tells you

  • docker version shows whether the CLI can talk to the Docker engine
  • docker info confirms the engine is up and reports useful runtime details
  • docker run --rm hello-world proves Docker can pull and run a real image

If hello-world prints its success message, your setup is working.

If one of these fails

Keep the diagnosis small:

  • if docker version fails, Docker is probably not running or the CLI cannot reach it
  • if docker version works but hello-world fails, check network access, login state, or image pulls
  • if docker info looks odd, restart Docker and try again before changing anything else

This small smoke test is worth keeping. It gives you a clean answer to a simple question: is Docker actually ready on this machine?

From Docker fundamentals — Install Docker, see the value, and learn the basics