Can I Run Docker Containers on Windows Server 2025 Without WSL or a Hypervisor?

I actually made a script to set up Docker via WSL. You can find it on GitHub if that helps! But just a heads-up, it does involve WSL, which you mentioned you want to avoid.

I'm guessing you're aiming to run Linux containers on your Windows Server VM. Unfortunately, that's not happening. Containers rely on the host OS for basic operations, so you can't run Linux containers natively on Windows Server without a Linux VM.

There's a slim chance you could get it working with QEMU, but honestly, the performance would likely be pretty poor, so I'd recommend against going that route.

You can install the Docker engine directly on Windows Server 2025, but it will only work with OCI images that are specifically built for that Windows version.

You might hear about this rare Windows update called "Ubuntu." It sounds odd, but worth a look if you're desperate for a solution!

The only option really is to use Windows containers, but they're quite rare and not many applications support them, aside from stuff like MSSQL Server. Still, your setup might flag it as nesting, so be cautious.