Worrying in this thread how few people seem to realize that docker desktop is not a) just another word for ‘docker’ or b) just an app frontend for running docker’s daemon in the background.

People seem to forget: Docker is a Linux-only technology.

If you’re running a non-Linux desktop OS like MacOS or Windows you need access to a Linux system to run docker.

So docker desktop on MacOS runs a Linux VM for you under the hyperkit hypervisor hosting a Linux OS running containerd.

On windows the equivalent involves managing a dockerd running inside WSL.

So since we are talking here about an app that embeds an entire Linux OS image, the patching surface area is going to be considerable - it’s not just got to be updated whenever docker releases a new version. It’s actually a minimal Linux distribution.

This also means people suggesting ‘alternatives’ to using docker are missing the entire value that docker desktop brings to MacOS and Windows users.