[laumars]

I was with you right up until this part:

> The fact that it's 2022 and there's still people that are going "hur-dur Solaris zones, BSD jails amiright" as if any of those technologies have any relevance is ridiculous.

Having diversity in the computing ecosystem is a good thing, not bad.

I'll take your point that Docker brought containers to the developers (frankly, I made that point myself) but that doesn't mean that Jails doesn't solve some problems that Docker (currently) struggles with. Nor does Docker's success mean that a little competition isn't healthy for the wider industry.

Dismissing the stuff that went before it as "systems administration garbage" because it was targeted at a different audience to yourself is a really poor attitude in my opinion. Especially when there are countless examples of when audiences different from developers also need to make use of software. Frankly, I thought by now we were past the sysadmin vs developer flamewars. But clearly not.

Aside from that minor rant, I do want to thank for your post. It was an informative read.

[tinco]

My apologies, I meant relevance to the problem that Docker solves, which is enabling developers to neatly specify and package their dependencies. I am not trying to diminish jails and zones usefulness to system administrators. I'm just saying if you put Docker in a comparison list to other technologies, jails and zones wouldn't even be in that list.

The annoyance comes from system administrators looking at the set of technologies inside Docker and saying "we already have that", and then just assuming Docker must be some sort of marketing scheme. I deployed docker in my organisation within a week of its first (beta?) release, when all of its "marketing" was a single blog post.

Docker solved an enormous real problem in the software industry, even if from a system administrators perspective it's just a new way of packaging applications, as there have been many in the past and probably will be many in the future.

[laumars]

Oh I never meant any of my comments to undermine Docker. While I do have some specific frustrations with Docker, the same is true with any technology stack: Jails and Zones included.

I'd never describe Docker as being a marketing gimmick. It was definitely a "right time, right place" tool. But that speaks more about how the market (and particularly Linux) was yearning for something better.

Thanks for the interesting conversation :)

[brazzledazzle]

Docker is the best because it did something its predecessors could not: made it accessible, easy to run and easy to share. On Linux. Now the technology has industry standardization and so much inertia it’s surviving the monetization drive by docker (the company). The existing software out there was sysadmin stuff because it was mostly DIY. Or required learning to administer and build tooling for another OS.