5 ms·

What? My first thought was "cool, Ubuntu backs LXC". My second was "waitaminute, Ubuntu actually wants to compete with Docker?". Docker, as you all know, is a f

by xorcist 12y ago

What? My first thought was "cool, Ubuntu backs LXC". My second was "waitaminute, Ubuntu actually wants to compete with Docker?". Docker, as you all know, is a farily well established LXC management solution. They then go on to state that LXC is a "real hypervisor" with live migrations and such. What? Did they take an established Linux household name, with wikipedia article and everything, and name their new semi-related project identically? And if it's a para-virtualized solution they're pushing, are they really competing against Xen? I'm not sure it's wiser than competing with Docker. Anyone from Canonical here and can explain what's going on?

amluto 12y ago
The top committer to LXC seems to work for Canonical: https://github.com/lxc/lxc/graphs/contributors https://github.com/lxc/lxc/graphs/contributors
- tribaal 12y ago
  Not only the top contributor, but several others in the top of that list.
sp332 12y ago
Docker, well-established? It may get a lot of press but it's not even two years old. It was just merged into OpenStack about 1 year ago. Edit: You know Docker doesn't use LXC by default anymore, right? It uses a different container library called libcontainer.
- nl 12y ago
  And yet oddly for something so young, it's seeing more usage than OpenStack. Of course that may have more to do with the problems within OpenStack, but Docker has it's own attractions too.
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    They have waaaaaaay more marketing than OpenStack. They've probably written and sponsored more PR fluff than code for Docker. And it's easier to deploy.
    - shykes 12y ago
      I agree that Docker is easier to deploy than Openstack :) However... It always astounds me how some people massively over-estimate the size and influence of Docker's marketing... Why yes, of course! The way we got Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM to integrate it in their products is by ghost-writing PR fluff. That's also how we got 600 people to contribute 9,000+ pull requests over 18 months [1] [2] [3]. Not bad for marketing monkeys! Seriously - after seeing so many hackers work so hard to improve the project every day, the "it's all marketing fluff" crap always gets to me. It's just plain disrespectful. How much legitimate engineering work do you need to see before you start respecting other people's work? [1] https://github.com/docker/docker/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/docker/pulse/monthly [2] https://github.com/docker/libcontainer/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/libcontainer/pulse/monthly [3] https://github.com/docker/docker-registry/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/docker-registry/pulse/monthly
      - ithkuil 12y ago
        Yes, and good engineering is also the art of simplicity; we should also respect engineering work by the amount of useless code they didn't write. Docker resonates well with people because it focuses on aspects of virtualization that people care: development and deployment. It alleviates the need of using complicated configuration management tools by providing layered images, and encourages fine grained containers by supporting first class volume sharing. The fact that it integrates well with other virtualization stacks is a proof that for a good part it's orthogonal to them.
      - peterwwillis 12y ago
        I have two opinions: logical, and emotional. My logical opinion says that Docker is a useful tool which, though flawed in many ways, provides real value to a large number of users. I've even recommended Docker be used for new projects in my company, on the basis that it fits in well with what we're trying to do. My emotional opinion is that Docker trades on trends in startup-world, systems engineering and the open source movement for the sole purpose of eventually generating revenue. This capitalistic perversion of what were before two idealistic and noble things (open source, engineering) is, quite honestly, abhorrent to me. So to answer your question: while I might eventually respect its engineering accomplishments, I despise it on principle. I hope one day it turns into a simple useful tool that people can decide to use or not use without being cajoled by developer evangelists.
- Rapzid 12y ago
  LXC is at least two things, the user land tools/libs and the project for the kernel container features right?
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Well, the project for the kernel features is the same people, but I don't think it is really named "lxc", its just patches for Linux. In the kernel they are just called "namespaces".
tanglesome 12y ago
Lxd will Not be competiting with Docker. It's meant to complement it. As for the rest of your questions, I'm digging around to see what else I can find.
rdtsc 12y ago
> Docker, as you all know, is a farily well established LXC management solution. Well established within the last year or so. But yeah, good to have more stuff. We'd still be talking on AT&T rotary dial phones from the 60s if we didn't competition.
cbsmith 12y ago
This really looks to me more like "Ubuntu wants to compete with OpenVZ".
cm-t 12y ago
There are technical comments that look (to me) interesting over this post : http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/2l9lp1/the_next_hypervisor_lxd_is_fast_secure_container/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/2l9lp1/the_next_hype...

by xorcist 12y ago

amluto 12y ago

The top committer to LXC seems to work for Canonical: https://github.com/lxc/lxc/graphs/contributors https://github.com/lxc/lxc/graphs/contributors

tribaal 12y ago
Not only the top contributor, but several others in the top of that list.

sp332 12y ago

Docker, well-established? It may get a lot of press but it's not even two years old. It was just merged into OpenStack about 1 year ago. Edit: You know Docker doesn't use LXC by default anymore, right? It uses a different container library called libcontainer.

nl 12y ago
And yet oddly for something so young, it's seeing more usage than OpenStack. Of course that may have more to do with the problems within OpenStack, but Docker has it's own attractions too.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  They have waaaaaaay more marketing than OpenStack. They've probably written and sponsored more PR fluff than code for Docker. And it's easier to deploy.
  - shykes 12y ago
    I agree that Docker is easier to deploy than Openstack :) However... It always astounds me how some people massively over-estimate the size and influence of Docker's marketing... Why yes, of course! The way we got Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM to integrate it in their products is by ghost-writing PR fluff. That's also how we got 600 people to contribute 9,000+ pull requests over 18 months [1] [2] [3]. Not bad for marketing monkeys! Seriously - after seeing so many hackers work so hard to improve the project every day, the "it's all marketing fluff" crap always gets to me. It's just plain disrespectful. How much legitimate engineering work do you need to see before you start respecting other people's work? [1] https://github.com/docker/docker/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/docker/pulse/monthly [2] https://github.com/docker/libcontainer/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/libcontainer/pulse/monthly [3] https://github.com/docker/docker-registry/pulse/monthly https://github.com/docker/docker-registry/pulse/monthly
    - ithkuil 12y ago
      Yes, and good engineering is also the art of simplicity; we should also respect engineering work by the amount of useless code they didn't write. Docker resonates well with people because it focuses on aspects of virtualization that people care: development and deployment. It alleviates the need of using complicated configuration management tools by providing layered images, and encourages fine grained containers by supporting first class volume sharing. The fact that it integrates well with other virtualization stacks is a proof that for a good part it's orthogonal to them.
    - peterwwillis 12y ago
      I have two opinions: logical, and emotional. My logical opinion says that Docker is a useful tool which, though flawed in many ways, provides real value to a large number of users. I've even recommended Docker be used for new projects in my company, on the basis that it fits in well with what we're trying to do. My emotional opinion is that Docker trades on trends in startup-world, systems engineering and the open source movement for the sole purpose of eventually generating revenue. This capitalistic perversion of what were before two idealistic and noble things (open source, engineering) is, quite honestly, abhorrent to me. So to answer your question: while I might eventually respect its engineering accomplishments, I despise it on principle. I hope one day it turns into a simple useful tool that people can decide to use or not use without being cajoled by developer evangelists.
Rapzid 12y ago
LXC is at least two things, the user land tools/libs and the project for the kernel container features right?
- justincormack 12y ago
  Well, the project for the kernel features is the same people, but I don't think it is really named "lxc", its just patches for Linux. In the kernel they are just called "namespaces".

tanglesome 12y ago

Lxd will Not be competiting with Docker. It's meant to complement it. As for the rest of your questions, I'm digging around to see what else I can find.

rdtsc 12y ago

> Docker, as you all know, is a farily well established LXC management solution. Well established within the last year or so. But yeah, good to have more stuff. We'd still be talking on AT&T rotary dial phones from the 60s if we didn't competition.

cbsmith 12y ago

This really looks to me more like "Ubuntu wants to compete with OpenVZ".

cm-t 12y ago

There are technical comments that look (to me) interesting over this post : http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/2l9lp1/the_next_hypervisor_lxd_is_fast_secure_container/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/2l9lp1/the_next_hype...