Docker Toolbox has been available for developers for a few years. It precedes newer tools such as Docker for Desktop. The Toolbox allows a user to work very elegantly with containers on any macOS or Windows computer. Containers must run on a Linux host. Neither Windows nor macOS can run containers natively. Hence, we need to run a Linux VM on our laptop, where we can then run our containers. Docker Toolbox installs VirtualBox on our laptop, which is used to run the Linux VMs we need.
As a Windows user, you might already be aware that there are so-called Windows containers that run natively on Windows, and you are right. Microsoft has ported Docker Engine to Windows and it is possible to run Windows containers directly on Windows Server 2016 or newer, without the need for a VM. So, now we have two flavors of containers, Linux containers and Windows...
