Yeah, from the point of view of a 70s university department minicomputer, Docker is another tool. A rapidly evolving one, one that has focused on developer adoption over other concerns. If you're using it to install just one thing on a server where you've installed many other things the old way, it's a pain.

When it gets interesting is when you invert the relationship, where you have multiple apps in Docker. Then the main server starts to look quite simple and bare, much easier to maintain. And then things like ECS start to make sense:

https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/

At that point, the OS becomes irrelevant except as a host for containers.