You might not be aware, but docker desktop is running a linux VM under the hood.

Try running a docker container whose executable is called “foo” in macOS. Then go to activity monitor and try to find “foo”, or try to attach to it from the host with lldb, or try to profile it with the Xcode profiling tools. You can’t.

This is because it’s running in a VM, not natively on the host. On Linux you can do any of those things from the host directly, without needing to shell into the container.

I actually found this so incredibly frustrating when I started working at a job that uses docker that I argued in vain against using docker at all, and then when that failed, I switched to doing all my coding and other technical work on a Linux VM and only using macOS for email.

Docker machine uses qemu to make a Linux VM to run docker containers in.

OSX is a distant third for a developer who is deploying docker containers. Microsoft and WSL2 are trying, but nothing beats a linux distribution for that.