[manigandham]

No it wouldn't have. What's unzipping and running that code? What's monitoring it and restarting it? How do you mount volumes and env variables? How do you open ports and maintain isolation?

A container is vastly more powerful for running an application than a tar file.

[archi42]

No offense, but you're aware you make it sound as if we used to use punch cards until the arrival of docker?

You can often run daemons as different users and set appropriate file permissions. You can add ENV variables to your start up scripts or configuration files. Volumes are mounted by the system (and you set appropriate access rights again). Monitoring and restarting services is managed by your init system (and probably some external monitoring, because sometimes physical hosts go nuts). Depending on your environment you can just produce debs, rpms, or some custom format for packaging/distribution.

Yes, sometimes you still want docker or even a real VM, and there are good reasons for that - I totally agree. But often it is not necessary. I'm often under the impression that some people forget that the currently hyped and cool tech is not always and under every circumstance the right solution to a given type of problem. But that's not an issue with docker alone...

[treis]

>You can often run daemons as different users and set appropriate file permissions. You can add ENV variables to your start up scripts or configuration files. Volumes are mounted by the system (and you set appropriate access rights again).

That sounds exactly like creating a Dockerfile. The difference is that your script has to work any number of times on an endless number of system configurations. The Dockerfile has to work once on one system which is a much easier target to hit. The "any number of times on an endless number of system configurations" is a problem taken care of by the Docker team.

[nwmcsween]

Which sounds exactly like having a proper package manager...

[loriverkutya]

You seems to be not aware of the problems docker solving “out-of-the-box” and that about 10-15 years ago, those problems was solved in-house developed toolset.

[weberc2]

The difference is that with VMs, you have to configure the things that you get for free with container runtimes. Specifically, Amazon can take care of a ton of the most mundane security and compliance burden that our org would otherwise have to own. Those differences means that developers can cost effectively be trained to do much of their own ops and I can solve more interesting problems.

[merb]

basically everything you described basically came with systemd. the thing that later made docker possible.

before it was just a mess. and it also isn't that much older than docker.