Docker Installation Architecture You can install Docker Engine on top of Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems. This figure shows a native Linux OS Docker deployment. This is a Linux system with several Docker applications installed. The Docker daemon manages the Docker containers: This example shows that Docker can be deployed as an application on older Windows or Mac systems via the Docker Toolbox . Toolbox uses docker-machine to provision a VirtualBox VM, which runs the boot2docker Linux distribution, and manages containers via the Docker daemon: This next example shows the Docker daemon installed directly on a supported Mac or Windows OS, creating containers on top of a HyperKit VM (Mac) or Hyper-V VM (Windows): Docker provides an efficient mechanism to build , ship , and run any app on any OS on any platform , i.e. physical host, virtual host or in the cloud: Docker