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I have started using Windows 10's Linux Subsystem and having great success using Ubuntu 14.04. No luck so far though with Docker - is this a limitation of the platform or is Docker+WLS combination going to feasible in the future?

I have quite a few scripts that need both Linux and docker presence.

muru
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petr
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    There *is* a Docker for Windows; is there any particular reason you're trying to run it on the WLS environment compared to the Windows environment directly? – Thomas Ward Nov 20 '16 at 23:45
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    I know - I suppose I could configure the Ubuntu instance to connect to docker-engine via TCP but was wondering if WLS was "complete" enough to support Docker (as it would make it even closer to my linux dev machine) – petr Nov 20 '16 at 23:49
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    I'm fairly certain WLS doesn't have all the necessary infrastructure to set up Docker. The core issue is that WLS, while having Linux-isms, is not really truly full-featured Linux. This is something that many are just accepting as a limitation... – Thomas Ward Nov 20 '16 at 23:52
  • Also see: http://serverfault.com/questions/767994/can-you-run-docker-natively-on-the-new-windows-10-ubuntu-bash-userspace/801138#801138 – muru Nov 21 '16 at 04:43

1 Answers1

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As of September 2016, No.

All current implementations of Docker on Windows use virtualisation, Docker 1.12 uses a hypervisor in Windows -thus removing the advantage of containerisation over virtualisation.

Docker needs more than just using Linux systems calls.

It needs process control groups (cgroups), a stackable filesystem (aufs), plus other Linux-based systems outside the kernel.

Neither cgroups nor aufs are natively in the Windows 10 kernel.

There is an implementation of Windows Server 2016 here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/quick_start_windows_server ..but this will only run some Windows services, e.g. IIS, and not Ubuntu

The source (thanks to muru) has answers with more detail and insight.

Thomas stated it quite well and short:

I'm fairly certain WLS doesn't have all the necessary infrastructure to set up Docker. The core issue is that WLS, while having Linux-isms, is not really truly full-featured Linux. This is something that many are just accepting as a limitation…

David Foerster
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