[cookiecaper]

Yeah, this is the key thing. People think Docker is the only way to run a container and they do all kinds of silly hacks to try to keep Docker containers alive and to get them to behave like normal VMs. There's no reason for that: you can use LXC, or better, illumos zones or BSD jails.

In the real world, Docker's limited-liftime execution paradigm is the niche requirement. Everyone else just wanted lightweight VMs.

[jitl]

Everyone’s “real world” is different. Docker’s model works great for distributing heterogeneous tools. At work, we have teams shipping python, ruby, and nodejs CLI programs inside Docker wrappers. Greatly reduces packaging frustration on end-user systems.

I run most of my home services in jails, but I am eager to rebuild them as Docker containers, because I’d rather have a single init on the host system run several containerized processes, then my current setup which is a tree of inits that makes monitoring more difficult than a single `sv status /service/*`.

[erric]

CoreOS rkt also looks like a good competitor to docker.