I am new to docker, and from my understanding the biggest docker advantages are the facts that the containers are lighter and faster than VMs, that the docker-engine should be abstracting the Host OS, and that containers don't come with a guest OS as they depend directly on the docker-engine (which uses some components of Any Host OS).
Now, I have a requirement, to mount some docker containers on a linux machine (and windows server in the future). And these containers should have a Linux distro + some software installed.
Does it make sense in this case to have a linux distribution from within the docker? If so, what's the difference between a docker and a VM in this case? And if not, are there any reason that would make this a correct approach?