# Introduction
Cytomine is an open-source RESTful web platform composed of multiple services encapsulated in Docker containers.
Leveraging Docker power, you can install the whole Cytomine platform on a personal laptop (without collaborative tools), on a virtual machine or a dedicated server in your lab or at large scale, by hosting containers on different machines to increase performance and stability (horizontal scaling).
To interact with Cytomine you can use a regular browser and access the graphical user interface (GUI). As a RESTful application, it is possible to interact using external clients in different languages (Python, Javascript, Java).
Cytomine platform comes now in two major versions :
Cytomine Community Edition 2023.1
The current stable version of Cytomine. Install this version
Cytomine Community Edition Legacy
The legacy version of Cytomine (v3), still proposed to installation, but not developped anymore, unless for bugfixing. Install this version