I came here to say just that ... A FreeBSD jail does not emulate or create a virtual machine - it's just a fancy chroot mechanism that produces only the unix p

I came here to say just that ... A FreeBSD jail does not emulate or create a virtual machine - it's just a fancy chroot mechanism that produces only the unix processes that actually get run inside the jail. A jailed httpd does not take up any more resources than the exact same httpd run on the base system. This makes it extremely efficient and, in fact, allows you to create an even richer multi-user platform than the original one the op has nostalgia for: a multi user unix system where everyone gets to be root.