Rebase docker containers on Debian
Currently the Docker images are based on images that MATHWORKs provides and maintains. This has some benefits:
- easier to maintain
- user-friendly ways to interact with the container
- no hassle with the MATLAB license, and if so, we can easily direct users towards the MATLAB support
- sponsored MATLAB licenses (e.g. on GitHub) work
But also some disadvantages:
- we are not in full control of the image
- image size is somewhat large
- Octave version is too old in Ubuntu 22.04
- Octave compatibility is not great (the testsuite for Octave typically does not pass for some system-related reason)
- requires additional hacking to improve compatibility with Dynare
- MATLAB does change things from time-to-time and we (or I) need to keep track of the corresponding GitHub repositories
A natural alternative would be to create a vanilla image along the lines we set up the runners that are based on Debian. We would then need to provide similar ways to interact with the container (e.g. noVNC) and check whether sponsored licenses still work. We would probably loose some user-friendliness here, but then again those who are using Docker might not really need those interactive features.
So, I would like to open this issue to discuss how we should proceed in the future? I'm leaning towards keeping it based on MATHWORK's containers as this is probably easier to maintain; but I have no problem to investigate time and resources towards the Debian option.