Well the Linux side has plenty of good alternatives and has had them for years, but good luck with MacOS or Windows users. Many of them just can't be bothered to understand how these technologies work.

They just want an easy installer that lets them "run docker containers" and they don't want to even think about a Linux VM. Even many developers can't be bothered to deal with this stuff and just want some easy abstraction. This is where Docker Desktop has value and why some people will continue paying for it.