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I am a huge fan of SmartOS. Back in the 2010s (around 2012), I was advocating its use in production at a small startup I worked. The SunOS kernel, ZFS, zero ins

I am a huge fan of SmartOS. Back in the 2010s (around 2012), I was advocating its use in production at a small startup I worked. The SunOS kernel, ZFS, zero install, immutable core, convenient way to manage containers and VMs together - all of this looked great on paper, especially containers. In reality, I ended up running almost everything in VMs. The only thing worked well natively was nginx. MongoDB, Mysql, even our php backend (some libraries) had issues, unfortunately. A year ago, I considered SmartOS again as a home lab driver, and no success again, Linux just has better support: drivers, pci passthrough, etc... and now with containers+vm through Proxmox or anything else. You can even run a k8s+kubevirt with zfs practically out of the box as a complete overkill though.

fridder 8mo ago
not sure if you have given FreeBSD a chance yet and it has an in-progress jail/vm frontend: https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve
- rtaylorgarlock 8mo ago
  Ah, very cool. Thanks for sharing; will try it out
Zaskoda 8mo ago
So many PHP libraries are just wrappers for some other library. I think that's mostly a strength, but in this case it was clearly a weakness.
gr4vityWall 8mo ago
These days, you're indeed better off using Illumos/SmartOS to run GNU/Linux zones/VMs, rather than native applications, from what I hear.
- gigatexal 8mo ago
  If you’re just going to run things in VMs then QubesOS one might as well
- ninninninnin 8mo ago
  Until you OOM ... Have fun with the kernel implementation differences between Solaris and linux
  - throwawaypath 8mo ago
    OOM in Solaris is much better than in Linux.
abrookewood 8mo ago
You can get some of that with IncusOS (https://linuxcontainers.org/incus-os/introduction/ https://linuxcontainers.org/incus-os/introduction/), which includes ZFS, immutability and manages both containers and VMs. I haven't used the OS yet, but have been enjoying Incus + Ubuntu.
- rufugee 8mo ago
  Using incus heavily on Omarchy here and love it. I created a script to read yaml configs and create ephemeral incus containers with certain capabilities and certain directories mounted within. It's a wonderful experience for sandboxing Claude Code.
  - abrookewood 8mo ago
    Interesting idea. How short lived are the containers?
    - rufugee 8mo ago
      As short-lived as I want them. Recreating them is one command and about 10 seconds (I have scripted apt/gem/etc installs as a part of the recreation). I tend to use them for a bit, and then destroy/rebuild. Think days, not weeks.

fridder 8mo ago

not sure if you have given FreeBSD a chance yet and it has an in-progress jail/vm frontend: https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve

rtaylorgarlock 8mo ago
Ah, very cool. Thanks for sharing; will try it out

Zaskoda 8mo ago

So many PHP libraries are just wrappers for some other library. I think that's mostly a strength, but in this case it was clearly a weakness.

gr4vityWall 8mo ago

These days, you're indeed better off using Illumos/SmartOS to run GNU/Linux zones/VMs, rather than native applications, from what I hear.

gigatexal 8mo ago
If you’re just going to run things in VMs then QubesOS one might as well
ninninninnin 8mo ago
Until you OOM ... Have fun with the kernel implementation differences between Solaris and linux
- throwawaypath 8mo ago
  OOM in Solaris is much better than in Linux.

abrookewood 8mo ago

You can get some of that with IncusOS (https://linuxcontainers.org/incus-os/introduction/ https://linuxcontainers.org/incus-os/introduction/), which includes ZFS, immutability and manages both containers and VMs. I haven't used the OS yet, but have been enjoying Incus + Ubuntu.

rufugee 8mo ago
Using incus heavily on Omarchy here and love it. I created a script to read yaml configs and create ephemeral incus containers with certain capabilities and certain directories mounted within. It's a wonderful experience for sandboxing Claude Code.
- abrookewood 8mo ago
  Interesting idea. How short lived are the containers?
  - rufugee 8mo ago
    As short-lived as I want them. Recreating them is one command and about 10 seconds (I have scripted apt/gem/etc installs as a part of the recreation). I tend to use them for a bit, and then destroy/rebuild. Think days, not weeks.