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Docker Windows vs. Linux
I will try to summarize the difference between Docker on Linux vs. Windows since it seems to be a lot of confusion at the moment. You can check my post on containers for more info.
First of all, containers are not a new thing, they were available before Docker in Linux, Docker introduced a simple local daemon process and a powerful REST API aligned with great tooling allowing this technology to rapidly grow. It also added a powerful registry and the efficient image layered system. I would recommend watching this series to understand in detail how containers work.
Let’s be clear, Containers are part of the Linux ecosystem, not Windows. Linux, is a better OS than Windows, its architecture, specially the Kernel and file system is much better than Windows. Containers take advantage of the process isolation in Linux alongside the names spaces to create isolated processes.
Until recently you could only use containers in Linux. You could take a 5MB image of a very light version of Linux and run it as an isolated process inside the Linux host. You can run several containers inside your Linux machine. This is very efficient, hence Docker popularity.
The first approach to support Docker on Windows was Docker Toolbox, which is basically a VM using Virtual Box with a Linux image. So, as the name suggest is just a tool to learn Docker but not very useful since it is a regular VM.
With Windows 10 Pro, Microsoft introduced the Hyper-V, which is a super fast virtualization tool, Docker for Windows was launched for Windows 10 Pro, to run containers much faster and easier, but you need Windows 10 Pro, Home will not work.
When Windows Server 2016 was launched, it was re architecture to support a kind of isolated process, so it can run Docker natively without Hyper-V or any virtualization. As of today, Windows Server 2016 is the only windows system that support native containers, however, the most basic image is 5GB big which is not very efficient. Windows server runs Windows containers natively and uses Hyper-V for Linux. Also, when you run Windows Containers you cannot run Linux ones, so you have to choose one or the other. Since 99% of the images are Linux base, and .NET can run on Linux, Windows containers are not that useful.
