Probably no technology has suffered more from a poor naming choice than containers. Unless you know better, when you hear the term container, you might think of a piece of software that runs on a computer as a standalone file representing an application. A container is anything but.

For those unaware of the details of container technology, particularly Docker container technology, the “little piece of code running on a machine” conceptualization is a common misunderstanding.

The objective of this track is to clear up this misunderstanding. In this track you’ll cover what a binary executable is and what a container is. Also you’ll learn why a binary executable and container are different. The scope of this track is confined to the Linux operating system, but everything said about Linux containers in this track is applicable to Windows too.