[elliotf]

Docker does not necessarily have to be single-process containers.

See https://phusion.github.io/baseimage-docker/ as an example of a full-OS docker base image designed to be lightweight.

These days, you can run the full OS inside docker[1][2], but you'll likely be running more than you need to.

[1] https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/1024 [2] https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/2276

[justinsb]

Absolutely agree, but (at least in my mind) Docker with a full OS really is just LXC. Running a single process inside the container is something that genuinely differentiates Docker from other approaches.

It's a powerful idea which to date has been tied to LXC containers, though I think that's a false association: it's just as interesting with KVM or Xen containers.

[nickstinemates]

I personally think the phusion images are garbage and kind of miss the point.

That being said, running init inside of a container is definitely a supported use case.