Which of the following statements best describes a key difference between virtual machines and containers? 

Containers are designed to be lightweight and resource-efficient compared to virtual machines. While virtual machines require a full guest operating system and a hypervisor to run, containers share the host operating system's kernel, which allows them to use fewer resources and start much faster. This resource efficiency makes containers particularly suitable for microservices architectures and cloud-native applications, where rapid deployment and scalability are essential. Containers enable developers to package applications with their dependencies while ensuring consistent performance across different environments, which is not as easily achievable with traditional virtual machines. Why Other Options are Incorrect: A) Containers are heavier than virtual machines: This is incorrect; containers are generally lighter than virtual machines as they do not include an entire OS. B) Virtual machines share the same kernel, while containers have their own: This statement is misleading; containers share the host kernel, whereas virtual machines have their own guest OS and kernel. C) Virtual machines are faster to start than containers: This is incorrect; containers typically start faster because they don't require booting an entire OS. E) Virtual machines are limited to Linux operating systems: Virtual machines can run various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and others, making this statement inaccurate.