Difference between Docker from DockerProvider and DockerMsftProvider

DockerMSFTProvider looks active as of February 3rd, 2021, its index's latest version is 19.03.14 from 21st December 2020, slightly behind the 19.03.15 release made two days ago.

I was hoping to see a 20.10.x release on DockerMSFTProvider by now, but I guess they're not yet ready to ship them.

It looks like DockerProvider has stopped updates: the latest version in its index is 19.03.8-beta3 from 2nd April 2020.

I've raised a ticket to discover the fate and future of the DockerProvider as a source of pre-release builds.


They are basically equivalent, with the exception that DockerProvider can also install pre-release builds.

Docker and Microsoft have WiP to standardize on DockerMsftProvider for production builds, and DockerProvider (likely to be renamed) for pre-release builds.

So for now:

Production: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick-start/quick-start-windows-server

Pre-release: https://blog.docker.com/2017/09/docker-windows-server-1709/

The respective doc pages will be adjusted to match.