5 ms·

FreeBSD and Jails are a fully packaged product, but the product isn't what you would like it to be, simply. They are meant to be building blocks for your own cu

FreeBSD and Jails are a fully packaged product, but the product isn't what you would like it to be, simply. They are meant to be building blocks for your own customised solutions, not a 'software application' like Docker is.

zenlot 7y ago
I've been using FreeBSD since around 2002 (including Jails), and the mentioned problem is still why majority of readers or Docker users have never ever heard of FreeBSD Jails, though it was released about 14 years before Docker. It just never took off for casual users and it was far from 'fully packaged product' back in a day. It got better, but it still suffer from the same problems as as it was 19 years ago. And partly because FreeBSD core team have a specific view on it.
- dreich 7y ago
  > [..] majority of readers or Docker users have never ever heard of FreeBSD Jails [..] I would argue that said users have never heard of UNSHARE(1) either, although Linux pretty much wipes the floor with anything else when it comes to containers. You can use UNSHARE(1) to create your container, extract a base image of your preferred distribution, configure it and start an instance. Heck, you can even create and package a shell script that does all the above for you. Nobody does that on Linux even though UNSHARE(1) (and friends) are very much finished products. They are not the products people want, that is, application specific containerization solutions like Docker, or something that can be easily deployed at scale in a reproducible and compliant way.
  - igetspam 7y ago
    Thanks for that. I was building containers pre docker but didn't know about unshare. I'm going to play around with this. I've heard of jails but haven't used BSD enough to ever use them. (And I'm not old enough to have ever mucked with zones. My Solaris boat anchors were just toys for a teen collector.)

5 ms·

FreeBSD and Jails are a fully packaged product, but the product isn't what you would like it to be, simply. They are meant to be building blocks for your own cu

by tachion 7y ago

zenlot 7y ago
I've been using FreeBSD since around 2002 (including Jails), and the mentioned problem is still why majority of readers or Docker users have never ever heard of FreeBSD Jails, though it was released about 14 years before Docker. It just never took off for casual users and it was far from 'fully packaged product' back in a day. It got better, but it still suffer from the same problems as as it was 19 years ago. And partly because FreeBSD core team have a specific view on it.
- dreich 7y ago
  > [..] majority of readers or Docker users have never ever heard of FreeBSD Jails [..] I would argue that said users have never heard of UNSHARE(1) either, although Linux pretty much wipes the floor with anything else when it comes to containers. You can use UNSHARE(1) to create your container, extract a base image of your preferred distribution, configure it and start an instance. Heck, you can even create and package a shell script that does all the above for you. Nobody does that on Linux even though UNSHARE(1) (and friends) are very much finished products. They are not the products people want, that is, application specific containerization solutions like Docker, or something that can be easily deployed at scale in a reproducible and compliant way.
  - igetspam 7y ago
    Thanks for that. I was building containers pre docker but didn't know about unshare. I'm going to play around with this. I've heard of jails but haven't used BSD enough to ever use them. (And I'm not old enough to have ever mucked with zones. My Solaris boat anchors were just toys for a teen collector.)