 <p>Yes. It is a good idea, with the correct set-up. You'll be running code as if it was a virtual machine.</p> <p>The Dockerfile configurations to create a build system is not polished and will not expand shell variables, so pre-installing applications may be a bit tedious. On the other hand after building your own image to create new users and working environment, it won't be necessary to build it again, plus you can mount your own file system with the -v parameter of the run command, so you can have the files you are going to need both in your host and container machine. It's versatile.</p> <pre><code>&gt; sudo docker run -t -i -v /home/user_name/Workspace/project:/home/user_name/Workspace/myproject &lt;container-ID&gt; </code></pre>