Textbook of Linux

b. 1983, France — Founder of dotCloud and Docker Inc; creator of Docker and Dagger

Also known as: Hykes

Solomon Hykes demoed the first public version of Docker in a five-minute lightning talk at PyCon 2013 — a short demonstration that triggered the container revolution. Docker repackaged existing Linux kernel mechanisms (namespaces, cgroups, union filesystems) behind a simple developer-facing toolchain, and within two years nearly every major cloud provider offered container services.

Hykes founded dotCloud in 2010 as a Platform-as-a-Service; Docker began as an internal tool for that platform. In 2013 he pivoted the company, renamed it Docker Inc., open-sourced the engine, and watched it become one of the fastest-growing developer tools in history. He stepped down as CTO in 2018 and later founded Dagger, a programmable CI/CD system.

Docker's technical contribution was modest — the underlying kernel features pre-existed — but its user-experience contribution was transformative: docker run made Linux containers something any developer could use in minutes.