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> and what I really dislike is dissing a technology because piece of it had existed in other forms before. How am I "dissing" Docker here? The comments before

> and what I really dislike is dissing a technology because piece of it had existed in other forms before. How am I "dissing" Docker here? The comments before me are saying other technologies weren't easy or as feature rich. I'm saying they were. That's not a criticism of Docker. It's just a fact about other technologies. > yes, zones on solaris offered a lot of the modern SDN networking stuff. was it popular? no. Popularity means jack shit about the quality of a product. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook are popular but the UX is appalling on each of them. Just as plenty of really well built technologies never gain traction. I suspect the reason Zones wasn't popular was because Solaris wasn't popular. Had Zones or Jails existed in the Linux mainline kernel at the same time as they had in Solaris/FreeBSD then we might not have seen a need for Docker. Or maybe it might still be around and popular...who knows? It's pointless to speculate over why something is popular because it's unscientific and unprovable. But we can discuss the UX and capabilities. > yes, with zfs, in theory, you could ship a binary file and the other side can load it nicely (if you're thinking send/recv). was it popular to ship things like that in the open, public, in an easy to use fashion? no. I can't speak for others did or did not, but I certainly did. (also see my comment above regarding popularity). > just admit docker popularized a lot of these and let's move along. I wasn't arguing that Docker didn't popularise these things. I was arguing against the point that the other tools were sub-par. > while the tech might have existed, the previous ecosystems sucked and docker changed this for good. And here's the crux of problem: you're conflating popularity with technical excellence. They're two unrelated metrics.

tinco 4y ago
Just for clarification, because zoltan isn't making very compelling arguments. Docker made containers easy and effective. Solaris zones were not as good as Docker is, BSD jails are/were not as good or easy to use as Docker is. Popularity has nothing to do with it, except that the popularity is an indication of the fact that Docker was revolutionary in the way it made these technologies accessible to a very large professional audience. Docker was not created in isolation, it was inspired by jails and zones and all the fancy new features that were added to the linux kernel at the time. Using just the words FROM, ADD and CMD, you can make a container definition that effectively isolates a runtime for just about any application in a 3 lines. Beyond the couple simple keywords all you need to have is absolutely basic linux knowledge, the level you can teach any developer in an afternoon. There's no need to pollute that developers mind with any other system administration garbage. Nothing about networking, policies, filesystems, whatever. Just basic bash and a couple keywords. Then when you want to go to production, you just hand the shit your developers wrote over to a professional system administrator and they'll make it run perfect at any scale. It's magic. Before Docker the world was darkness and bullshit, and after Docker the world was drenched in light and all that is good. 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. Docker is technologically excellent.
- laumars 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 :)
_zoltan_ 4y ago
popularity has won every single time in history over technical excellence. I know this is HN and a techbro echo chamber, but technical excellence is not even in the top 3 that people care about.
- laumars 4y ago
  Exactly my point. People in here are conflating popularity with it being better

tinco 4y ago

Just for clarification, because zoltan isn't making very compelling arguments. Docker made containers easy and effective. Solaris zones were not as good as Docker is, BSD jails are/were not as good or easy to use as Docker is. Popularity has nothing to do with it, except that the popularity is an indication of the fact that Docker was revolutionary in the way it made these technologies accessible to a very large professional audience. Docker was not created in isolation, it was inspired by jails and zones and all the fancy new features that were added to the linux kernel at the time. Using just the words FROM, ADD and CMD, you can make a container definition that effectively isolates a runtime for just about any application in a 3 lines. Beyond the couple simple keywords all you need to have is absolutely basic linux knowledge, the level you can teach any developer in an afternoon. There's no need to pollute that developers mind with any other system administration garbage. Nothing about networking, policies, filesystems, whatever. Just basic bash and a couple keywords. Then when you want to go to production, you just hand the shit your developers wrote over to a professional system administrator and they'll make it run perfect at any scale. It's magic. Before Docker the world was darkness and bullshit, and after Docker the world was drenched in light and all that is good. 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. Docker is technologically excellent.

laumars 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 :)

_zoltan_ 4y ago

popularity has won every single time in history over technical excellence. I know this is HN and a techbro echo chamber, but technical excellence is not even in the top 3 that people care about.

laumars 4y ago
Exactly my point. People in here are conflating popularity with it being better