Hello, Many (most) HPC administrators very much detest the idea to grant any sort of root privileges to their users. This consequently rules out the installation of our Debian packages and also the employment of Docker images for the execution of binaries. Ouch! After all, with this perpetual avalanche of biological data we are often dependent of some sort of shared infrastructure for storage and/or computation. Also, for consistency within long-running projects, one cannot just go and update Debian packages because of a new project starting. Every project comes with its own set of versioned tools and data. These are prime use cases for containers - if they would just work as regular users.
To the rescue comes Singularity. It does what you would want to do with Docker, without extra privileges: * deliver a set of tools and/or data readily configured for the task * become Linux-distribution agnostic * continue working with Docker images of yours or your collaborators Our pals from neuro.debian.net are already actively using this technology and kindly nurture backports.d.o with it. I have also seen Roland in the changelog. Many thanks! With feedback from Yaroslav I created a quick introduction to get you started at https://wiki.debian.org/singularity. It is quite an eye opener. Enjoy! Best, Steffen