#container

What is it
a piece of software
What it does
most container engines
don't actually run the containers
rely on an OCI compliant Container runtime like runC .

What it does
Handling user input
Handling input over an API often from a Container Orchestrator
including command line options
pulls images
Take the Container Image and turn it into a Container

How it runs the container

Preparing the metadata for Container Runtime to start the container correctly
unpacks the files and metadata
Using defaults specified by the container image
Using user input to override defaults in the container image
decompressing and expanding the container image on disk using a Graph
Driver (block, or file depending on driver)
Calling the Container Runtime
Hands them off to the linux kernel
making API call to the linux kernel
initiates extra isolation
Preparing a container mount point, typically on copy-on-write
storage (again block or file depending on driver)
Containers run as linux processes

Family
Docker
RKT
CRI-O
LXC.
containerd
Railcar
Many cloud providers, Platforms as a Service (PaaS), and Container Platforms
have their own built-in container engines
Having an industry standard Container Image Format allows interoperability
between all of these different platforms.
For an even deeper understanding, please see Understanding the Container
Standards. See also Container Runtime.