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I’m itching to replace my home server’s FreeBSD with Linux and Kubernetes. I use it (& build dev tools for others) at work plenty so for me, the learning curve

by jitl 8y ago

I’m itching to replace my home server’s FreeBSD with Linux and Kubernetes. I use it (& build dev tools for others) at work plenty so for me, the learning curve is in the past. I’m not sure if I would recommend this journey for others, but I also wouldn’t recommend FreeBSD to anyone, either. In both cases, you know what you’re getting in to - something complex, opinionated, powerful, and industrial strength.

barrystaes 8y ago
Try Unraid on your home server: boots from USB and runs in memory, no raid risks but have network share span several HDDs, parity HDDs, use SSD for cache. No kubernetes involved - just a webinterface to run containers, install dockers as "apps" on your server. And Unraid is linux, you can but dont need to tinker. Unraid is how i started using Dockers and became happy friends with my home server again. (tm)
- jitl 8y ago
  I think you misunderstand me: my objective is to tinker. Before, I was tinkering with FreeBSD, now I will be tinkering with Kubernetes. Thanks for the recommendation though.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
You'll know this already but I'd say when you're coming from FreeBSD you'll be disappointed with Docker in particular, because it serves no purpose in the (usually) well-organized BSD world where the good stuff is built from source, and developed to POSIX guidelines most of the time anyway. Docker is just a workaround for the perceived mess of shared libraries in the Linux world of multiple O/S vendors (by not using shared libs in the first place which could be solved by statically linking everything), and FreeBSD's jails is IMHO superior as sandbox technology anyway.
- jitl 8y ago
  I found the jails ecosystem as old and creaky as FreeBSD itself; the technology is good, and everything makes sense, but after using Docker on Mac and Linux for a while, I've started to prefer the lighter-weight and more user-friendly abstractions. If there was a Jailfile equivalent for FreeBSD and a command-line tool with the same interfaces as docker, namely `docker run --rm -it ...`, I might be staying on FreeBSD.

by jitl 8y ago

barrystaes 8y ago

Try Unraid on your home server: boots from USB and runs in memory, no raid risks but have network share span several HDDs, parity HDDs, use SSD for cache. No kubernetes involved - just a webinterface to run containers, install dockers as "apps" on your server. And Unraid is linux, you can but dont need to tinker. Unraid is how i started using Dockers and became happy friends with my home server again. (tm)

jitl 8y ago
I think you misunderstand me: my objective is to tinker. Before, I was tinkering with FreeBSD, now I will be tinkering with Kubernetes. Thanks for the recommendation though.

tannhaeuser 8y ago

You'll know this already but I'd say when you're coming from FreeBSD you'll be disappointed with Docker in particular, because it serves no purpose in the (usually) well-organized BSD world where the good stuff is built from source, and developed to POSIX guidelines most of the time anyway. Docker is just a workaround for the perceived mess of shared libraries in the Linux world of multiple O/S vendors (by not using shared libs in the first place which could be solved by statically linking everything), and FreeBSD's jails is IMHO superior as sandbox technology anyway.

jitl 8y ago
I found the jails ecosystem as old and creaky as FreeBSD itself; the technology is good, and everything makes sense, but after using Docker on Mac and Linux for a while, I've started to prefer the lighter-weight and more user-friendly abstractions. If there was a Jailfile equivalent for FreeBSD and a command-line tool with the same interfaces as docker, namely `docker run --rm -it ...`, I might be staying on FreeBSD.