"Can only host Linux" -- Windows Containers are a thing too: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...
"Can host a single app" -- not true either. It's just bad practice to host multiple apps in a single container, but it's definitely possible.
IMHO it's not very nice to use the generic-sounding "linuxcontainers.org" domain exclusively for LXC-related content there.
windows containers, only run on windows hosts.
when you run a linux container on a windows host, you're actually running a linux container inside of a linux vm on top of a windows host.
containers share the host operating system's kernel. it is impossible for a linux container (which is just a linux process) to execute and share the windows kernel. the reverse is true, a windows container (which is just a process) cannot execute and share the linux kernel
the article is correct, linux containers can only execute on a linux host
The NT kernel originally had Microsoft POSIX subsystem[0], which was discontinued and replaced with Windows Services for UNIX[1], which was then replaced with Windows Subsystem for Linux[2]. WSL has had two versions;
WSL 1 implemented a subset of linux syscalls directly in the windows kernel. This was discontinued and replaced with WSL 2
WSL 2 is running, you guessed it, a linux VM[3]
> The original version, WSL 1, differs significantly from the second major version, WSL 2. WSL 1 (released August 2, 2016), acted as a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) by implementing Linux system calls in the Windows kernel. WSL 2 (announced May 2019), introduced a real Linux kernel – a managed virtual machine (via Hyper-V) that implements the full Linux kernel. As a result, WSL 2 is compatible with more Linux binaries as not all system calls were implemented in WSL 1.
> Version 2 introduces changes in the architecture. Microsoft has opted for virtualization through a highly optimized subset of Hyper-V features, in order to run the kernel and distributions
> The distribution installation resides inside an ext4-formatted filesystem inside a virtual disk, and the host file system is transparently accessible through the 9P protocol
When you run linux containers on a windows host, you're running those containers inside of a linux vm.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux#WS...
Not sure about the one app thing but that’s the general design of those ad well I suppose.
The Docker folks could have done their work under this umbrella and (maybe for good reasons) chose not to. For later container runtimes, idk the story.
But this project/community definitely laid the groundwork for all of those later Linux container runtimes.