Kinda surprising that this doesn't support Linux.

Podman can transparently start microVMs instead of local containers via libkrun as well, which does support Linux: https://josecastillolema.github.io/podman-wasm-libkrun/

> Docker Sandboxes require Docker Desktop 4.58+ on macOS or Windows. Linux is not supported since Docker Desktop uses platform-specific virtualization (Apple Virtualization.framework on macOS, Hyper-V on Windows).

Docker can launch machines (linux vms) on Linux too, that is all they are doing here is launching a container instance separate Linux VM, vs the typical shared VM instance.

By default they don't do so on Linux because it has performance costs and consumes resources, but they fully support KVM[0].

I am not sure if it is a more optimized docker machine VM image or not, but it looks they are just recycling the old model with support for instance specific docker sockets.

[0]https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/linux/

I encurage people to try podman on windows/MacOS just because they will allow you to SSH into the machine `podman ssh` and let you pull back the covers on the black box.

But Docker/Podman/Rancher Desktop use the same methods.