Yes for windows and Mac it runs a Linux VM. On windows it can also use WSL2 as the linux vm.
Docker-engine is the daemon built by docker. Podman is an opensource work a like. Docker-engine doesn't support running as a user other than root. Podman does. This announcement says minikube will work with Podman running as not root.
Docker-engine is the daemon built by docker. Podman is an opensource work a like. Docker-engine doesn't support running as a user other than root. Podman does. This announcement says minikube will work with Podman running as not root.