What is the fundamental difference between containers and virtual machines? Is it possible to run a Windows container on a Linux host?

Containers and virtual machines differ in their level of isolation and virtualization method. A virtual machine emulates a complete hardware environment, including a separate OS, which requires more resources. Containers, on the other hand, use the host OS kernel and isolate applications at the process level, making them lighter and faster.

You cannot run a Windows container directly on a Linux host, as containers use the host OS kernel. To run a Windows container, you need a Windows host or a virtual machine with Windows. Similarly, Linux containers run on Linux hosts.