Docker and LXD don't compete. Docker is great for running clustered processes - cloud-native apps - where Docker gives you hyperelasticity. CS Docker Engine provides more coordination facilities for those cloud-native apps.

LXD is more like KVM in that gives you "guests" that feel like a full OS. You can run existing apps in there in exactly the same way you would run them in a VM.

So these are two counterparts in the container continuum, and it's useful to understand them both so you use the right thing at the right time.

I'm well aware of LXC, I do understand them both. And LCX is not more like KVM. KVM is full virtualization, it emulates hardware, and nothing like LXC.

LXC is based on cgroups and kernel namespaces - the exact same things that enable Docker-based containers. LXD and Docker engine are competing "container"-based virtualization engines.

LXC can can be run as app-based containers just like Docker. This is what lxc-execute does. You don't have to run init as pid 1 in LXC.

By the way "Cloud-native" is little more than a marketing term.