Docker desktop creates and manages Linux VM with docker engine inside. It also does some magic to allow mounting host directories inside containers. I've yet to

Docker desktop creates and manages Linux VM with docker engine inside. It also does some magic to allow mounting host directories inside containers. I've yet to reproduce that magic, TBH. It's obviously important for macOS, because macOS does not support docker containers. While Windows supports docker containers, most docker containers are built for Linux, so Docker Desktop is important for Windows as well. Now for Linux you can run docker engine on the host, if you're proficient with Linux. However some people use Docker Desktop on Linux as well. I could imagine that you can run very old host Linux this way. I, personally, avoid docker desktop on macOS. Right now I'm using remote Linux VM and in the future I'll use Linux in VM, configured manually. However I've yet to find out how to mount host directories inside that VM containers. Some magic.