[mwcampbell]

I wonder why Quizlet didn't just stick with Joyent but switch from SmartOS to the newer Linux-based infrastructure containers and/or Docker containers. Joyent put a lot of effort into reviving LX-branded zones on Illumos precisely to address the concern that this article raises with using an OS other than Linux.

Also, why dismiss DigitalOcean as a niche provider for hobbyists? The simple pricing, with lots of data transfer included, should appeal to a lot of businesses too.

[bcantrill]

(I'm the CTO of Joyent.)

Sadly (and despite repeated pleading), Quizlet didn't bother to do anything -- at all -- with LX-branded zones. This was a bit dispiriting because they were part of the motivation for the work (namely, a customer of ours that was upfront with the "impossible" demand of the performance they saw in a SmartOS container but with their Linux stack). I think that even by the time the LX-branded zone work was clearly on a production trajectory (i.e., late 2014), they had already implicitly decided to move away from Joyent to a more established brand. That's fine, and I don't fault them for it (and I definitely appreciate their kind words for Joyent in general and our support and engineering teams in particular) -- but I do wish they'd been more upfront about their rationale.

[wmf]

It seems clear from the article that they want actual Linux, not "I can't believe it's not Linux" LX-branded zones, not Linux running in a VM on Solaris, and not Linux running in a VM on Hyper-V. This is somewhat irrational, but people are that way.