Self-hosting my photos with Immich

Actually, I've setup a proxmox server last week that run a couple of self-hosted application. I've nextcloud running and it was fairly easy to setup. The next item on my list WAS Immich. I decided against trying to deploy it. The reason is simple: they are essentially forcing the use of Docker, which I won't touch at at all. Either a native proxmox container (which is just lxc) or a proper VM, but I keep those in reserve as they can be heavy. I'm not asking of them to create a native package for debian or a container image; a simple install script that bootstraps the application (checks & install itself and dependencies), bootstrap the database and basic config (data directory, url & ports, admin password) is more than enough. The same script should be use to update the application if possible, or provide an updater on the admin panel to update the application without manual steps or data migrations. Adguard Home does all of this perfectly in my opinion. I know Immich thinks they are making things "easier" to just dump everything into a docker container, but some of us wont touch it at all. Same reason I avoid any projects that heavily relies on nodejs/npm ecosystem.

I really don't understand this take. A script that installs all required dependencies is fine if and only if you are dedicating a machine to immich. It probably requires some version of node, with possibly hidden dependencies on some python, it uses ffmpeg, so all related libraries and executables need to be there. You then have a couple separate DBs, all communicating together. Let's not talk about updates! What if you're skipping versions? Now your "simple install script" becomes a fragile behemoth. I would NOT consider this if it was non docker-native. Plus, I don't have a server with enough resources for a lot of VMs, with all of their overhead and complications, just to have one per service. Nowadays there are many ways to run a container not just the original docker.com software, and you can do that on pretty much any platform. Even Android now!

What are some arguments against using docker?

I think it's the best of every world. Self contained, with an install script. Can bring up every dependent service needed all in one command. Even your example of "a simple script" has 5 different expectations.

I've never understood it either. I still deploy some things into their own respective manual deployments but for lots of things having a pre-made docker compose means I can throw it on my general app VM and it'll take 5 seconds to spin up and auto get HTTPS certs and DNS. Then I don't lose hours when I get two days into using something and realize it's not for me.

Also have you read some of the setup instructions for some of these things? I'd be churning out 1000 lines of ansible crap.

Either way since Proxmox 9.1 has added at least initial support for docker based containers the whole argument's out the window anyway.

Me neither. Docker is the platform agnostic way to deploy stuff and if I maintained software, it is ideal - i can ship my environment to your environment. Reproducing that yourself will take ages, or alternatively I also need to maintain a lot of complex scripts long-term that may break in weird ways.