Certainly my recollection is that containers didn't enter the zeitgeist until Docker came around. LXC and OpenVZ had existed for years before Docker, and Jails/

Certainly my recollection is that containers didn't enter the zeitgeist until Docker came around. LXC and OpenVZ had existed for years before Docker, and Jails/Zones had existed in BSD/Solaris for years before that. Mentioning the long-standing existence of these tools was a favorite pastime of Docker detractors in the early days. Really, Docker's innovation wasn't the ability to run processes in a container (as mentioned before, that technology had existed for years already); it was the Dockerfile and the Docker hub/container registry. Prior to Docker, the way you'd build a container was by running debootstrap or unpacking a tarball/zip file of a root image. Take a look at https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/l-lxc-containers/ https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/l-lxc-containers/ . As far as I recall, there was no LXC equivalent to `docker build` or the registry except maybe wiring up Packer or home-grown shell script and throwing a tarball in S3 or something.