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Comment by marcosnils | Hacker News Reader

Docker captain here. Starting from windows 10 anniversary (which should be free to upgrade) and windows server 2016 windows can natively run Docker containers without hyper-v. Even though some features might be missing, docker and microsoft are working hard to get everything done. There are plenty of tutorials in the web about how to setup .net and mysql apps natively on windows. I totally recommend it.

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I don't get it. "Natively run Docker containers without Hyper-V"? What does this mean? Does it emulate a Linux kernel? What syscalls are available? What is the underlying filesystem?

The containers that run natively use a windows based image, not linux. So, no kernel emulation, no linux syscall translation, just pure windows base

Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, they are emulating Linux kernel by translating the syscalls. I don’t know which ones are implemented, but MS told “lxss.sys has ~235 of the Linux syscalls implemented with varying level of support. This support will continue to improve over time especially with the great feedback we get from the community.”

The underlying filesystem is NTFS, Microsoft implemented two wrappers. VolFs supports all Linux features, but not interoperable with Windows. DrvFs is limited from the Linux perspective, but interoperable with Windows, i.e. Linux apps can read and write data from Windows’ drive C.

Your answer contradicts this one from numo16: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12734445. Who is right?

I think I am.

If you’ll scroll to the end of the linked document, you’ll read docker says windows containers is beta feature not yet available on stable builds.

Also, there’s output of docker version command that clearly says OS/Arch: linux/amd64.

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