Docker Symlinks Not Woking On Fresh Install

Question

I am a complete noob to Docker, I apologize if this a simple question, I seem to have a significant installation/configuration error in Docker. I am working on a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 and Docker version 20.10.12, build e91ed57.

I am literally trying to follow the basic Docker tutorial for beginners from their website and the second command is not working.

The tutorial is no big deal, I can switch tutorials to something more up to date, but it seems that key functionality of Docker is not working correctly.. symlinks.

This command docker build -t getting-started . results in this error:

unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path: lstat /home/<user>/Downloads/WebDev/Docker/tutorial/getting-started-master/app/Dockerfile: no such file or directory

I double & triple checked everything. I literally tried every solution found here:
Docker: unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path: GetFileAttributesEx
Docker build gives "unable to prepare context: context must be a directory: /Users/tempUser/git/docker/Dockerfile"

Nothing worked. I could only execute the command using an explicit path. rather than "." which is going to get annoying pretty quickly when developing real projects.

docker build -t getting-started ~/Downloads/WebDev/Docker/tutorial/getting-started-master/

All documentation states docker build -t getting-started . is the correct command, so I am worried about continuing with a "broken" docker installation.

I ran the docker ./check-config.sh script and it shows all is well except CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED: missing which I thought was inconsequential for the moment since hello-world image worked as expected.

Hhhmmm?