allow both windows and linux containers at the same time on docker desktop for windows

[LewisPringle]

Currently you need to track your current mode and 'swithc containers mode' which is slow and prevents using both windows and linux containers at the same time. This is very inconvenient for those who work with both windows and linux (which is probably most people using docker windows).

Seems like it should be easy too. Even if you have differnt backend processes for windows and linux, just have an intermediary process that multiplexes comms to the two (windows/linux) backends.

[kevmeister68]

I thought of this also but it’s a double-edged sword, because you presumably need a command-line switch to indicate which docker engine you wish to send the command to. This might work OK for very ad-hoc sets of commands, but if you need to perform several docker commands in a row for one docker engine, then switching engines becomes the easier option. I’m presuming use of command-line here not the Docker Desktop GUI. The GUI could benefit, however, from a highly visible widget (eg. top-right where the settings, help, account etc icons are located), rather than only in the system tray menu.

My approach is that I have two batch files, dockwin.baat, and docklin.bat, which invokes the docker-cli program with the appropriate -SwitchXXXEngine switch. Easy enough to use from command-line or call from batch script.

I have not found switching to be slow using this approach.