M1 is just worse arm. Since most people use x86_64 instead of arm, docker had to emulate that architecture and therefore had performance issues. Now you’ve got arm specific images that don’t require that hardware emulation layer, and so work a lot better.
Since that didn’t solve the Linux kernel requirement, it’s still running a VM to provide it.
Docker requires the Linux kernel to work.
M1 is just worse arm. Since most people use x86_64 instead of arm, docker had to emulate that architecture and therefore had performance issues. Now you’ve got arm specific images that don’t require that hardware emulation layer, and so work a lot better.
Since that didn’t solve the Linux kernel requirement, it’s still running a VM to provide it.