It's almost the same as using docker locally.
I'd like to run a local instance of the "hyper system," fully contained on my laptop, perhaps running atop virtualbox. If I find it appealing, with respect to the usage experience (i.e. deploying/composing containers), I'd be willing to run some apps on the real deal. I am, though, not willing to experiment with the "real deal" as a means of evaluating it.
If you think you might end up using it, why try and replicate it on your machine (any more than Docker already does) rather than just cross the deployment bridge sooner?
I'd like to worry even less about the container host and get comfortable with a system like Hyper, but it's important to me to get used to it running locally for dev prior to employing it "in the cloud" for prod.
You can do exactly the same with Hyper. Play with Docker locally and then move to Hyper.
The CLI commands are pretty much identical, docker compose works in the same way.
Of course it's not exactly indentic, neither is a vagrant image and an AMI.
Yes there are important differences between running a dev server on VirtualBox and a prod server on one of the above, but there is parity in the workflow. The same is true when thinking about docker-machine + docker, locally then remotely.
I understand that Hyper's cli is quite similar to docker's cli. But my preference is to not consider it seriously until I can bang against a version of the Hyper backend running locally. If that's not forthcoming, fine, Hyper's not for me. :-) If it is, then great! I can't wait to play with it, locally, on my personal computer/s.
It's like "I absolutely won't try DigitalOcean unless they let me create a VM locally first!" Doesn't make any sense.