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Technology isn't that important here, it's what stems from it is. Adoption, infrastructure, tools, community. There's also a price for doing it differently. An

by xaduha 11y ago

Technology isn't that important here, it's what stems from it is. Adoption, infrastructure, tools, community. There's also a price for doing it differently. And believe you me, using BSD nowadays is the definition of doing things differently. What for? What I'm getting for losing my time and reinventing the tools that are already available and much more polished? Dockerfiles can be replicated. Docker Hub can be replicated. Missing things can be compiled from sources, probably. But all that costs time for little to no gain.

protomyth 11y ago
That's basically the argument to use Windows and Windows-based technology and not Linux. Everything you can do on any of the UNIX boxes, you can do with Windows. It might be different, but it is still a more popular / supported platform. Since I'm not a Windows fan, I find value in doing it differently, and so have Linux fans. I think you will find FreeBSD and SmartOS users find the cost in time to bring a large enough gain to satisfy their business requirements.
- xaduha 11y ago
  > That's basically the argument to use Windows and Windows-based technology and not Linux. Not today it isn't. Years, maybe decades ago it could be. What Linux containers do is help to remove the barrier that various distributions introduced, it makes things more accessible and it's more lightweight than using virtualization. Centos, Alpine, Ubuntu, whatever. As long as it is in a container I can work with it. I can even run some Windows binaries with Wine inside a container. rkt is largely compatible with Docker infrastructure, so that too is fine. But what jimktrains2 suggesting is complete opposite of that, it reduces options.
  - laumars 11y ago
    > But what jimktrains2 suggesting is complete opposite of that, it reduces options. Personally I'd consider having familiarity with more than one platform would increase one's options. But ultimately having other solutions on the market is a good thing. Not only because no one solution is the best at every metric (be it stability, security, speed, memory usage, nor any specific requirements), nor because different solutions can appeal to different personalities. But mostly because different solutions might solve a problem in a unique way that the competing solutions may not have considered - often in ways that can ported and thus benefit the competitors and wider community. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss anything that's outside your field of expertise.
    - xaduha 11y ago
      What you're talking about is a luxury I can't afford. That's what I mean when I talk about the price. There are plenty of far more important technologies that I would rather learn. I can't afford to learn two technologies that do about the same thing, of which one is significantly less popular, might now have tools that other has and runs on a significantly less popular OS.
      - laumars 11y ago
        That's actually a fair point and one I completely sympathise with. But your original argument very much sounded like you were suggesting that people in general shouldn't bother with FreeBSD, jails, nor any other technologies which weren't dominant in their respective field. Which is why we disagreed.
        xaduha 11y ago
        You misinterpreted it.
laumars 11y ago
You do realise that "different" platforms can still be popular enough to have a lot of the same ecosystems. Hell, Docker itself used to be the "alternative"; not even that long ago in fact. FreeBSD might only have a fraction of the community that Linux does, but that's still a pretty large number of developers and sysadmins in real world terms. Disclosure: I run both FreeBSD and Linux systems.
- xaduha 11y ago
  And your point is? A suggestion to switch to BSD and jails for an average user of Docker is laughable.
  - laumars 11y ago
    Well if someone is competent enough to create a Docker image then it's not a great stretch to assume many of them would also be competent enough to create a jail. And FreeBSD is just as easy to use as Linux (actually, I generally find it easier to administrate than Linux since things are more rigorously laid out. But a lot of that is also down to my own personal preference). At the end of the day, both Jails and Docker are well documented. So even the people only interested in blindly copying and pasting commands should be able do the basics. The real problem FreeBSD and jails face isn't with support nor accessibility but rather dumb prejudice. Much like why many Windows users think Linux is difficult. If you spend your whole time shouting that your way of doing things is the best then you're never going to give anything else a fair chance.
    - xaduha 11y ago
      You're missing the point. Even if jails is the most elegant, easy and powerful technology in the world it's still on BSD. People are not going to switch to BSD just because of jails. Sure, then can use both, but why? Docker and linux containers in general made things easier and more accessible for many. Switching from that to jails doesn't make sense.
      - laumars 11y ago
JdeBP 11y ago
> And believe you me, using BSD nowadays is the definition of doing things differently. ... although people like Florian Haas argue that the way that one does things on the BSDs is actually the way that makes sense to do things with Docker, as well, and the way that you think to be "different" is actually the sensible way overall. * https://plus.google.com/+FlorianHaas/posts/4xjQP1q6DEN https://plus.google.com/+FlorianHaas/posts/4xjQP1q6DEN * https://www.hastexo.com/blogs/florian/2016/02/21/containers-just-because-everyone-else/ https://www.hastexo.com/blogs/florian/2016/02/21/containers-...
- xaduha 11y ago
  Choosing BSD instead of Linux is "doing things differently". I'm talking about popularity and what it means in this whole comment tree, not about technical merits.
Wilya 11y ago
Have you used both jails and Docker? Saying docker is a much more polished option doesn't match my experience. Yes, it has more features, but with these features come more bugs. Some of them are minor annoyances. Some are of the "our infrastructure is fucked until we switch our storage driver" kind. Sometimes, stability is a gain.
- xaduha 11y ago
  I'm not comparing Docker and jails, I'm talking about things around. Stackoverflow.com coverage, blogs posts and guides, github repos, publicly available images, etc.

by xaduha 11y ago

protomyth 11y ago

That's basically the argument to use Windows and Windows-based technology and not Linux. Everything you can do on any of the UNIX boxes, you can do with Windows. It might be different, but it is still a more popular / supported platform. Since I'm not a Windows fan, I find value in doing it differently, and so have Linux fans. I think you will find FreeBSD and SmartOS users find the cost in time to bring a large enough gain to satisfy their business requirements.

xaduha 11y ago
> That's basically the argument to use Windows and Windows-based technology and not Linux. Not today it isn't. Years, maybe decades ago it could be. What Linux containers do is help to remove the barrier that various distributions introduced, it makes things more accessible and it's more lightweight than using virtualization. Centos, Alpine, Ubuntu, whatever. As long as it is in a container I can work with it. I can even run some Windows binaries with Wine inside a container. rkt is largely compatible with Docker infrastructure, so that too is fine. But what jimktrains2 suggesting is complete opposite of that, it reduces options.
- laumars 11y ago
  > But what jimktrains2 suggesting is complete opposite of that, it reduces options. Personally I'd consider having familiarity with more than one platform would increase one's options. But ultimately having other solutions on the market is a good thing. Not only because no one solution is the best at every metric (be it stability, security, speed, memory usage, nor any specific requirements), nor because different solutions can appeal to different personalities. But mostly because different solutions might solve a problem in a unique way that the competing solutions may not have considered - often in ways that can ported and thus benefit the competitors and wider community. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss anything that's outside your field of expertise.
  - xaduha 11y ago
    What you're talking about is a luxury I can't afford. That's what I mean when I talk about the price. There are plenty of far more important technologies that I would rather learn. I can't afford to learn two technologies that do about the same thing, of which one is significantly less popular, might now have tools that other has and runs on a significantly less popular OS.
    - laumars 11y ago
      That's actually a fair point and one I completely sympathise with. But your original argument very much sounded like you were suggesting that people in general shouldn't bother with FreeBSD, jails, nor any other technologies which weren't dominant in their respective field. Which is why we disagreed.
      - xaduha 11y ago
        You misinterpreted it.

laumars 11y ago

You do realise that "different" platforms can still be popular enough to have a lot of the same ecosystems. Hell, Docker itself used to be the "alternative"; not even that long ago in fact. FreeBSD might only have a fraction of the community that Linux does, but that's still a pretty large number of developers and sysadmins in real world terms. Disclosure: I run both FreeBSD and Linux systems.

xaduha 11y ago
And your point is? A suggestion to switch to BSD and jails for an average user of Docker is laughable.
- laumars 11y ago
  Well if someone is competent enough to create a Docker image then it's not a great stretch to assume many of them would also be competent enough to create a jail. And FreeBSD is just as easy to use as Linux (actually, I generally find it easier to administrate than Linux since things are more rigorously laid out. But a lot of that is also down to my own personal preference). At the end of the day, both Jails and Docker are well documented. So even the people only interested in blindly copying and pasting commands should be able do the basics. The real problem FreeBSD and jails face isn't with support nor accessibility but rather dumb prejudice. Much like why many Windows users think Linux is difficult. If you spend your whole time shouting that your way of doing things is the best then you're never going to give anything else a fair chance.
  - xaduha 11y ago
    You're missing the point. Even if jails is the most elegant, easy and powerful technology in the world it's still on BSD. People are not going to switch to BSD just because of jails. Sure, then can use both, but why? Docker and linux containers in general made things easier and more accessible for many. Switching from that to jails doesn't make sense.
    - laumars 11y ago

JdeBP 11y ago

> And believe you me, using BSD nowadays is the definition of doing things differently. ... although people like Florian Haas argue that the way that one does things on the BSDs is actually the way that makes sense to do things with Docker, as well, and the way that you think to be "different" is actually the sensible way overall. * https://plus.google.com/+FlorianHaas/posts/4xjQP1q6DEN https://plus.google.com/+FlorianHaas/posts/4xjQP1q6DEN * https://www.hastexo.com/blogs/florian/2016/02/21/containers-just-because-everyone-else/ https://www.hastexo.com/blogs/florian/2016/02/21/containers-...

xaduha 11y ago
Choosing BSD instead of Linux is "doing things differently". I'm talking about popularity and what it means in this whole comment tree, not about technical merits.

Wilya 11y ago

Have you used both jails and Docker? Saying docker is a much more polished option doesn't match my experience. Yes, it has more features, but with these features come more bugs. Some of them are minor annoyances. Some are of the "our infrastructure is fucked until we switch our storage driver" kind. Sometimes, stability is a gain.

xaduha 11y ago
I'm not comparing Docker and jails, I'm talking about things around. Stackoverflow.com coverage, blogs posts and guides, github repos, publicly available images, etc.