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"I would be totally on board with using FreeBSD as my primary server OS .. if it had a container engine." FreeBSD is the original container engine - although,

by rsync 7y ago

"I would be totally on board with using FreeBSD as my primary server OS .. if it had a container engine." FreeBSD is the original container engine - although, for the sake of completeness, we should count Solaris "zones" and call it a tie ... I think there is a cultural and temporal connotation of Docker - and the use-cases that it typically enabled - that makes it seem very different than 'jail' but make no mistake: jail did all of those things and more, many years earlier. The VPS, as we currently think of it, was built first[1] on top of FreeBSD and jail. [1] JohnCompanies announced beta availability of "server instances" on 303 and cDc mailing lists in mid 2001. Someone else coined the term "VPS" a bit later ...

twblalock 7y ago
Being first doesn’t matter. Docker became the industry standard and jails did not.
xorcist 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, FreeBSD jails were available in a release version in 2000. Linux had Virtuozzo in 2001, explicitly for the use case we would call VPS today. Solaris didn't have zones until 2005.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
It's mainly that the Docker interface is easier to use, in fact I don't know of any Jails frontend that comes close. Also, at this point it would need to support the same image format and be very obviously better to see wide adoption.
rkeene2 7y ago
Linux VServers came out around the same time (2001) [0], so the claim about "many years earlier" is spurious without being more specific about which things it did earlier. [0] http://linux-vserver.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Is_this_a_new_project.3F_When_was_it_started.3F http://linux-vserver.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Is_this_...
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
Docker in 2020 is, for 95% of the use cases [1], nothing but a better packaging format than .tar.gz. I'm sure you could throw away the isolation bits and it would still be as popular. [1] Totally scientific figure, of course.

by rsync 7y ago

twblalock 7y ago

Being first doesn’t matter. Docker became the industry standard and jails did not.

xorcist 7y ago

According to Wikipedia, FreeBSD jails were available in a release version in 2000. Linux had Virtuozzo in 2001, explicitly for the use case we would call VPS today. Solaris didn't have zones until 2005.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

It's mainly that the Docker interface is easier to use, in fact I don't know of any Jails frontend that comes close. Also, at this point it would need to support the same image format and be very obviously better to see wide adoption.

rkeene2 7y ago

Linux VServers came out around the same time (2001) [0], so the claim about "many years earlier" is spurious without being more specific about which things it did earlier. [0] http://linux-vserver.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Is_this_a_new_project.3F_When_was_it_started.3F http://linux-vserver.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Is_this_...

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

Docker in 2020 is, for 95% of the use cases [1], nothing but a better packaging format than .tar.gz. I'm sure you could throw away the isolation bits and it would still be as popular. [1] Totally scientific figure, of course.