finally the end of lx* containers on the way. not the actual end of course, who knows docker guys could buy this one as they did to some other unikernel companies.
I have nothing against VMs either. But even when they're tiny (as in the case of unikernels), do VMs scale as much as processes? I'm skeptical. Maybe someone has data.
Containers kinda suck for those 3 things but no other tool does all 3. It's a jack of all trades master of none situation.
I hate the trend of "download this container cause packaging a .deb is hard" etc.
Containers on their own aren't enough to deploy a reliable production system. Even on a small scale. To use them for reals you need a lot of domain knowledge and the support of a large ecosystem like Docker. And even then it's easy to get stuck in a rats nest of brittle tooling.
I don't have anything against containers. I'm just tired the exaggerated "ease of use" claims (eg: I talk about container management being a non-trivial problem and people telling me "just user Kubernetes!").
You also get a network namespace, process namespace, user namespace and ability to set cpu/memory limits.
Since you would have a container for each application, you have an easier time setting and testing restrictive apparmor/selinux capabilities and even get some hardening out of the box.
Sure you could get them without containers, but the whole benefit is doing it in a standard, easy way.
It could and historically has been solved even without linking everything statically, it's just that Linux people have some shared delusion that a stable and consistent base system is bad, there should be no distinction between system and application, and having two copies of a library is an unforgivable sin. Consequently we get the nightmare complexity and inflexibility of the package management scheme to do things we did in DOS on a 286 with no special software at all.
"You Could Have Invented Container Runtimes: An Explanatory Fantasy" https://medium.com/@gtrevorjay/you-could-have-invented-conta...
Docker became popular because of a ubiquitous CLI. Having good UX is only part of the battle: the massive network effect (and associated tooling boost/community support) is significant and should not be discounted.
I'm sure there are similar things to Docker's all-in-one UX that have emerged on the BSDs. I'm also sure there are programs to configure Dropbox using an SCM and FTP links in a fast, seamless way on par with the Dropbox setup flow, but they aren't going to take off, because the predecessor is not only convenient, but is also pre-existing with massive popularity.
The same is true for Docker:containers. Some competitor may replace them in time, but whoever they are, "as good as" is not going to be their value prop.