Newbie-question: Dockered Windows applications? -I don't get it

Open Source Projects DockerEngine
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Hi experts,

probably it is a rookie-question, but as I couldn’t find any information on it, I dare to ask… :wink:

I heard from Microsoft that they are going to support Docker as well, but am not sure what this really means in the end. So here is my intended use-case: I would like to take an existing old Windows 7 application and put it into a Docker image. Intention is that using Boot2Docker, this “dockerized” Win7 application does run on any potential Windows (7, 8.x, 10, Azure) platform.

Up to now, I’d go for a full-fledged VMware image -including a Win7 license for the “guest OS” therein.

A Docker-solution as sketched above would be fine to both skip the OS-licensing issue as well as the “version hell” topic, but: Would this scenario work at all for Windows??

(Bonus question: In a VM world, if I need any drivers, these would have to be native to the host OS, not the guest OS. I assume the same principle applies for “dockerized” applications as well?)

Thanks for your help!

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Hi nightinggale,

Today, you cannot containerize a Windows app. You can only containerize Linux apps today.

And containers use the kernel of the Linux Host on which they run.

Once Microsoft enables containerization of their apps with a format that Docker can understand, then we will be able to run Windows Containers in Docker on Linux, like boot2docker. Licensing will come into play, in this situation as well, I think.

I hope this makes it clear for you. Cheers.

-Joe

P.S: There was another question similar to this for Mac OS - please visit Trying to Understand Docker on Macs for details.