freebsd has 'containers' called jails, first released in ~2000, pre-empting solaris zones by four years, openvz by 5 years, lxc by 8 years, and docker by 10+ ye

freebsd has 'containers' called jails, first released in ~2000, pre-empting solaris zones by four years, openvz by 5 years, lxc by 8 years, and docker by 10+ years. jails were/are common in the webhosting and gaming industries, and nowdays they can be managed with infrastructure-as-code tools like ansible or puppet. when backed by zfs, they can be made to behave very similarly to docker containers. with the demise of docker the company and the fractured ecosystem of competing container runtimes, specifications, kernel compatibility issues, and management tools, jails are worth testing out. iocage is one way to start managing them.