I'm looking to run an AI image generator on my Windows 11 machine, but I've hit a snag with the installation instructions on their GitHub, which seem to be geared toward Linux. They offer two Docker containers—one for CUDA 12 and another for CUDA 11. I'm wondering if I can actually install and run either of these containers on Windows 11, or if that's not possible at all. Here's the GitHub link for reference: https://github.com/Tencent-Hunyuan/HunyuanDiT. Just to summarize the instructions: 1. Download the Docker image tar file for either CUDA version, then import the tar file to manage the images, and finally run the container with specific settings. So, is running these Docker containers on Windows 11 feasible?
2 Answers
To address your question directly, no, not all Docker containers are cross-platform. For example, ARM-based containers won't run natively on x86_64 architectures without some form of emulation, and Windows containers can only run on Windows. However, for the specific CUDA containers you're mentioning, you should be fine running them on Windows 11 with Docker Desktop.
Generally speaking, Docker containers aren't cross-platform in that sense. They primarily run on Linux because that's where Docker was built to operate. When you use Docker Desktop on Windows, it's actually running a Linux virtual machine behind the scenes to host those containers. So technically speaking, you would need to work through that VM to run Docker containers in Windows.
So, would that mean I can run those containers on Windows as long as I'm using Docker Desktop? I assumed they would work without any issues across operating systems.