containerd

Containerd is the industry-standard, low-level container runtime daemon managing the complete container lifecycle: image transfer, storage, execution, and supervision.

This is the core engine for modern container orchestration; it’s a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) graduated project. Containerd handles the full container lifecycle, from pulling images to managing network attachments and supervising processes (via runC). It was originally built by Docker, then donated to the CNCF in 2017. Today, it serves as the primary runtime for major platforms like Kubernetes (since version 1.24) and Docker Engine, supporting the Open Container Initiative (OCI) specifications for maximum compatibility across Linux and Windows hosts.

https://containerd.io