Docker is not a requirement for hardware accelerated transcoding or tonemapping.
Plex has supported hardware accelerated transcoding with a native installation for several years. I can’t tell you an exact date, but it worked the day my DS918+ arrived in November 2017.
Plex has supported hardware accelerated tonemapping with a native installation since Plex Media Server 1.29.1.6260, released in September 2022.
- (Linux) External user-mode graphics drivers no longer need to be installed to use hardware tone mapping on Intel systems
