> why do I need to wrap THAT of all things in a container?

If you can't see a reason why, then you probably don't need to. You probably have different needs than other people.

Many people use Docker not because of what they're doing inside of the container, but because it is convenient for tangential activities. Like lifecycle management, automation, portability, scheduling, etc.

I have several static sites in Docker containers in production. We also have dozens of other microservices in containers. We could do everything the same way, or we can one-off an entirely separate architecture for our static sites. The former makes more sense for us.

Because you want a reproducible environment/runtime for that static server. Nix/NixOS takes it a step further, in that it provides not only a reproducible runtime environment, but a reproducible dev and build environment as well.

Once you've gone the container route you no longer even need to think about virtual servers. You can just deploy it to a container service, like ECS.

I actually found myself needing something like this a couple weeks ago. I use a self-hosted platform (cloudron.io) that allows for custom apps. I wanted to host a static blog on that server. Some people are happy to accept "bloat" if it does, in fact, make life easier in some way.

If you literally ONLY ever need to run a single static website, then yeah, containers might not be helpful to you.

But once you start wanting to run a significant number of things, or a significant number of instances of a thing, it becomes more helpful to have a all-purpose tool designed to manage images & run instances of them. Having a common operational pattern for all your systems is a nice, overt, clean, common practice everyone can adapt & gain expertise in. Rather than each project or company defining it's own deployment/operationization/management patterns & implementations.

The cost of containers is also essentially near zero (alas somewhat less true with regards to local FS performance, but basically equal for many volume mounts). They come with great features like snapshots & the ability to make images off images- CoW style capabilities, the ability to mix together different volumes- there's some really great operational tools in containers too.

Some people just don't have real needs. For everyone else...