Install Docker without HyperV/VirtualBox/VMware support on Windows

This post details how to deploy docker on windows, and does not mention using any hypervisor

I may misunderstand you but that blog bost does mention Hyper-V which “uses the Windows hypervisor”. It just didn’t use the word “hypervisor”

Be aware, I tried these instructions and they did not work, dockerd.exe just wont run.

I have actually made it work. It was last year I think and wanted to use Docker on Windows without Hyper-V since I wanted to use VirtualBox to run Linux VMs. I didn’t check this blog post if the instructions are correct but it can be done.

Just a short summary:

1.) Yes, Docker was originaly designed to run Linux containers

2.) Now it is possible to run Docker on Windows or MacOS

3.) To run Linux containers on Windows there must be some kind of virtualization since containers use the kernel of the host operating system. You can’t run Liunx containers on Windows directly. The Docker client just hides the fact that Linux containers are actually inside a vitual machine.

4.) Running Windows containers means you don’t always need virtualization (Hyper-V isolation). You can just use the Windows kernel to run native Windows containers. This is called “process isolation”.

5.) Unfortunately the Windows containers are not as advanced as Linux containers yet. Therefore it is recommended to use the Hyper-V isolation. One of the disadvantages of process isolation is that you can’t use any Windows version inside the container (which is a one of the best things in Linux containers) since the container depends on the Windows version more than Linux containers on the Linux kernel version. Microsoft new that so they actually wrote about it somewhere they would work on it (I couldn’t find it now). Maybe one day they will solve it.

6.) MacOS is different since the Docker and Windows teams worked together to make it work on Windows but it did not happen with Apple yet. I heard this explanation in one of the videos on the Docker youtube channel. This is why we don’t have native MacOS containers despite the fact that MacOS is more similar to Linux than Windows.