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Docker is still free.

it is only Docker Desktop which is no longer free.

most power users do not use or need Docker Desktop.

The desktop application is the easiest way to get up and running on Mac or Windows where a VM is necessary. Of course you can still set up docker engine manually in a VM, but even then it doesn't offer the same level of integration, like host mounts, Rosetta on Mac. Desktop Linux is the only environment where the desktop app offers little benefit over just running the engine.

I always forget there's people who do software development on something other than Linux.

I mean I use Windows too (my laptop has poor Linux support, plus Proton wasn't a thing when I bought it so I went for something which is guaranteed to run games well). But I do all my development in a Linux VM in Virtualbox. If you have an SSD, performance is indistinguishable from native.

> If you have an SSD, performance is indistinguishable from native.

In my experience this is very much not the case. Running a graphical linux desktop in a VM on beefy hardware still introduces noticeable keypress latency for me, as an example.

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