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Container solutions like Docker get us part of the way there. In a sense you could argue that containerization is precisely the multi-tenancy solution I

Container solutions like Docker get us part of the way there. In a sense you could argue that containerization is precisely the multi-tenancy solution I'm heading toward, except that it borrows heavily from the legacy path of virtualization by treating system images like giant statically linked binaries. Nailed it. This is why Docker does not excite me at all, and why I think there's room for other container systems to improve up on the Docker model by solving this problem. I made my initial attempt awhile ago by adding basic container support to a package manager that allows users to use a virtualenv-like tool to create containers to hack in: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/container-provisioning-with-guix.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/container-provisionin...

lowbloodsugar 9y ago
"Container solutions of the kind that are like docker" vs "Container solutions in general of which docker is an example". If he is using docker to write-off all container solutions, then that's a mistake, since it sounds like using the underlying container solution (on which docker then adds the ability to manage system images) is exactly what he wants.
- davexunit 9y ago
  Yeah, perhaps namespaces will satisfy them, but from what I've seen network namespaces leave something to be desired. I found that it wasn't too hard to roll my own container implementation and hook it up to a tool that was already providing software environments to unprivileged users, so I think there's plenty of room for other people to take the primitives that Linux provides and run with them.
api 9y ago
Docker is like an extended satire of Unix multi-tenancy in code form. "Damn it... another f'ing package broke. Fuck it. We should just tar up whole Linux distributions and push them out as updates." "Hey... that's a great idea!" "What?" "Tar up whole distributions and..." "No! No! I was only kidding! Wait! where are you going...?"

lowbloodsugar 9y ago

"Container solutions of the kind that are like docker" vs "Container solutions in general of which docker is an example". If he is using docker to write-off all container solutions, then that's a mistake, since it sounds like using the underlying container solution (on which docker then adds the ability to manage system images) is exactly what he wants.

davexunit 9y ago
Yeah, perhaps namespaces will satisfy them, but from what I've seen network namespaces leave something to be desired. I found that it wasn't too hard to roll my own container implementation and hook it up to a tool that was already providing software environments to unprivileged users, so I think there's plenty of room for other people to take the primitives that Linux provides and run with them.

api 9y ago

Docker is like an extended satire of Unix multi-tenancy in code form. "Damn it... another f'ing package broke. Fuck it. We should just tar up whole Linux distributions and push them out as updates." "Hey... that's a great idea!" "What?" "Tar up whole distributions and..." "No! No! I was only kidding! Wait! where are you going...?"