When it comes to running Windows Containers, the only straight forward way to run them has been through Docker Desktop. Starting in August of 2021, the license that Docker Desktop was distributed under changed. It became “Free for personal use” only. If you were using it as a part of your day-2-day job, you were going to need a subscription/license. (see Docker Subscriptions for more details.) But what if you don’t need the fancy UI, and you just want to run Windows Containers on your Windows 10 or 11 host? One option is to download and manually install the Moby binaries from github. If you are looking for a more automated process, Stevedore may be for you.

Over five years ago I bought an Apple MacBook Pro to learn Go and deep dive into things like containers and Kubernetes. My reasoning was simple, OSX was “*nix” like, the keyboard was amazing, and I could use Docker Desktop to run and manage containers on this machine. I could have used a Windows machine or built a Linux machine, but I wanted the ease of use of Mac, without having to worry about the constant hassles of patching (Windows) or limitations on drivers and power management (Linux). Over these past few years I have become addicted to using a Mac for my day-to-day work… However starting last year Docker made a change to their licensing terms on Docker Desktop as well as constant reminders to “upgrade to the latest version” have forced me to look elsewhere.