Well docker tends to be more secure if you configure it right. As far as images go it really is just a matter of getting your images from official sources. If there isn’t a image already available you can make one.
The big advantage to containers is that they are highly reproducible. You no longer need to worry about issues that arise when running on the host directly.
Also if you are looking for a container runtime that runs as a local user you should check out podman. Podman works very similarly to docker and can even run your containers as a systemd user service.