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Docker wins because it's easy to use and becomes a de-facto standard. The author misses that completely. I get it, you can do "manually" the same things as doc

by jek0 8y ago

Docker wins because it's easy to use and becomes a de-facto standard. The author misses that completely. I get it, you can do "manually" the same things as docker when you're a good system administrator. You'll come up with your own unique solution to most problems addressed by docker. Regardless of the fact that it'll probably be specific to a single linux distribution, you probably won't have anyone interested in investing time in learning your unique way of doing containers. I did not waste time when I learned how docker does it. I login into a server managed by this author, curse him for using all those "standard" techniques in his own unique way. Spend hours figuring out the details. I login into a server running things with docker: I already know all I need. `docker ps` will tell me what services it runs, `docker inspect` for more info, `docker logs` give me the logs of whatever service I need to check, etc.

mmt 8y ago
> Docker wins because it's easy to use. > The author misses that completely. That's inconsistent with what the article says right in the introductory paragraph: > Docker is genuinely more complex and harder to use than the alternatives. > I'm recommending them because they are simpler to learn and use. You may disagree with their relative ease, but it's disingenuous to say that the author misses that. > You'll come up with your own unique solution to most problems addressed by docker. "Unique" is a pretty extraordinary claim, considering the author is advocating using pre-existing tools and facilities. Replacing AUFS with Btrfs is a far cry from writing ones own filesystem entirely. > I login into a server managed by this author, curse him for using all those "standard" techniques in his own unique way. Spend hours figuring out the details. They're not "standard" (with quotes). They're standard (without quotes). They have man pages. They're well-documented and (one would hope, if Docker makes heavy use of some of them) well-understood. Again, just because he didn't use them in the Docker way, doesn't make that way unique. Chances are, if it takes you hours to figure it out, especially if you already know what and how Docker does it, you're doing something woefully wrong. > I login into a server running things with docker: I already know all I need I could make exactly the same statement with the situations reversed, except with the addition that I now have to learn this "docker" tool with its added complexity and new syntax to make sure I don't break anything in case I have to make a change. Already knowing a tool fails to address the author's point.
- jek0 8y ago
  > "Unique" is a pretty extraordinary claim, considering the author is advocating using pre-existing tools and facilities. [...] just because he didn't use them in the Docker way, doesn't make that way unique. Yes you can make use of the same standard tools as Docker to achieve the same features. There are a multitude of ways you can integrate those (and multiple ways to combine your different options). Docker offers one way, the author describes another way. The author's way is more unique. > Docker is genuinely more complex and harder to use than the alternatives. To make this point, the authors says: "Just read man 7 namespaces. It's well written and makes it easy to grok the concept". I did, it's super low-level. The audience for this man-page seems to be OS developer, not web developers (or other upper stack level developers). Any non-system admin can understand the docker documentation, be able to build, distribute and launch container images in less than an hour... Learning to use btrfs or aufs, chroot, ifconfig, init scripts, ..., is easier? Most people never heard of IPC subsystems, UTS, ... and don't need to.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > The author's way is more unique. The author's way is merely different. "Unique" is a superlative. The author's method(s) means more choices. There's an argument to be made that enforcing a single choice is inherently simpler (to which there are counter-arguments), but you didn't make it. > Learning to use btrfs or aufs, chroot, ifconfig, init scripts, ..., is easier? Yes, that is exactly what the author is asserting. Again, this seems disingenuous of you. It's clear that you disagree, but mere disagreement, with only this kind of rhetorical language, lacking any substantial backing, would be a shallow dismissal.
- koffiezet 8y ago
  That's bullshit. To start a docker container, you don't need to mount a layered filesystem image - nevermind figure out a way how to create and reuse it, you don't need to know all nitty-gritty details of creating network interfaces, private networking, port forwarding with NAT, cgroups, and a ton of other details that are simply not important to get an application running. Docker does that for you. If you would have to get read all man pages for every single tool you'd have to get familiar with just to figure out how a custom "not invented here" system works - you'd be in for a treat...

by jek0 8y ago

mmt 8y ago

> Docker wins because it's easy to use. > The author misses that completely. That's inconsistent with what the article says right in the introductory paragraph: > Docker is genuinely more complex and harder to use than the alternatives. > I'm recommending them because they are simpler to learn and use. You may disagree with their relative ease, but it's disingenuous to say that the author misses that. > You'll come up with your own unique solution to most problems addressed by docker. "Unique" is a pretty extraordinary claim, considering the author is advocating using pre-existing tools and facilities. Replacing AUFS with Btrfs is a far cry from writing ones own filesystem entirely. > I login into a server managed by this author, curse him for using all those "standard" techniques in his own unique way. Spend hours figuring out the details. They're not "standard" (with quotes). They're standard (without quotes). They have man pages. They're well-documented and (one would hope, if Docker makes heavy use of some of them) well-understood. Again, just because he didn't use them in the Docker way, doesn't make that way unique. Chances are, if it takes you hours to figure it out, especially if you already know what and how Docker does it, you're doing something woefully wrong. > I login into a server running things with docker: I already know all I need I could make exactly the same statement with the situations reversed, except with the addition that I now have to learn this "docker" tool with its added complexity and new syntax to make sure I don't break anything in case I have to make a change. Already knowing a tool fails to address the author's point.

jek0 8y ago
> "Unique" is a pretty extraordinary claim, considering the author is advocating using pre-existing tools and facilities. [...] just because he didn't use them in the Docker way, doesn't make that way unique. Yes you can make use of the same standard tools as Docker to achieve the same features. There are a multitude of ways you can integrate those (and multiple ways to combine your different options). Docker offers one way, the author describes another way. The author's way is more unique. > Docker is genuinely more complex and harder to use than the alternatives. To make this point, the authors says: "Just read man 7 namespaces. It's well written and makes it easy to grok the concept". I did, it's super low-level. The audience for this man-page seems to be OS developer, not web developers (or other upper stack level developers). Any non-system admin can understand the docker documentation, be able to build, distribute and launch container images in less than an hour... Learning to use btrfs or aufs, chroot, ifconfig, init scripts, ..., is easier? Most people never heard of IPC subsystems, UTS, ... and don't need to.
- mmt 8y ago
  > The author's way is more unique. The author's way is merely different. "Unique" is a superlative. The author's method(s) means more choices. There's an argument to be made that enforcing a single choice is inherently simpler (to which there are counter-arguments), but you didn't make it. > Learning to use btrfs or aufs, chroot, ifconfig, init scripts, ..., is easier? Yes, that is exactly what the author is asserting. Again, this seems disingenuous of you. It's clear that you disagree, but mere disagreement, with only this kind of rhetorical language, lacking any substantial backing, would be a shallow dismissal.
koffiezet 8y ago
That's bullshit. To start a docker container, you don't need to mount a layered filesystem image - nevermind figure out a way how to create and reuse it, you don't need to know all nitty-gritty details of creating network interfaces, private networking, port forwarding with NAT, cgroups, and a ton of other details that are simply not important to get an application running. Docker does that for you. If you would have to get read all man pages for every single tool you'd have to get familiar with just to figure out how a custom "not invented here" system works - you'd be in for a treat...