Docker is essentially a wrapper for containerization tech that is native to Linux only (cgroups etc.). So no, there's no way to just run the engine directly on

Docker is essentially a wrapper for containerization tech that is native to Linux only (cgroups etc.). So no, there's no way to just run the engine directly on other OSs. Docker Desktop takes care of the dirty details of virtualizing a Linux layer on Mac and Windows so the engine can run there. And they want to charge larger companies for it. Which seems very reasonable to me.