Docker Toolbox has been available for developers for a few years. It precedes the newer tools such as Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows. The toolbox allows a user to work very elegantly with containers on any Mac or Windows computer. Containers must run on a Linux host. Neither Windows or Mac can run containers natively. Thus, 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 exists so-called Windows containers that run natively on Windows. And you are right. Recently, Microsoft has ported the Docker engine to Windows and it is now possible to run Windows containers directly on a Windows Server 2016 without the need for a VM. So, now we have two flavors of containers, Linux containers...
