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Comment by devicetray0 | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a viable alternative to docker, at least for BSD. Any opinions on that statement?

The compelling part of Docker is container distribution and deployment using easily created and replicated container images. The templating feature is a step in the right direction towards recreating Docker's replicable container functionality, but is still quite different and less beneficial than the container image repository approach.

BSD Jails (and Solaris zones) predate Linux containers in general by a number of years, but the adoption and development of large-scale BSD container orchestration systems seem to have lagged behind the likes of Kubernetes.

On the other hand this stuff really isn't rocket science and shouldn't be as complicated as we are making it.

> This looks like a viable alternative to docker, [...]

This looks more like something in the spirit of systemd-nspawn plus templates if I'd compare it to the Linux domain.

As much as I applaud any initiatives of creating workable solutions with great FreeBSD primitives (Jail containers, ZFS, great TCP/IP stack and so on) pretty much anything that's not working with widespread adopted standards (Kubernetes, Docker, OCI, etc.) doesn't stand a chance of becoming relevant on the market.

That’s the thing. I am a long time BSD fan, grew up with it an even tan FreeBSD on the desktop for years. But then came the cloud, docker, kubernetes, and the whole shebang, and it simply does not make sense to even consider hosting applications on FreeBSD again if you are deploying a modern stack.

Yes, of course, there are ways around that, but it just doesn’t make economical sense for most organizations.

Well, I would argue that it still makes sense, depending on what you want to achieve: world-top networking performance? FreeBSD. 1st class ZFS support? FreeBSD. Not being vulnerable to widespread Linux exploits (Shellshock, for example)? FreeBSD. And the list could go on.

Colin Percival (creator of Tarsnap) runs FreeBSD on AWS (discussed here on HN several times). More info:

https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2018-12-26-the-many-ways-to...

Sure you can run FreeBSD on AWS, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. A modern stack orchestrates containers on a higher level, using kubernetes, nomad, or something similar. I’m having a hard time seeing how FreeBSD could fit into this type of architecture.

I know this might hit a nerve for some. I agree with the limitations of FreeBSD compared to Linux.

I run a research cluster, and here’s how I built it.

Firewall+DNS= OpenBSD(pf)

File server(NFS) = FreeBSD (ZFS)

Compute nodes = Fedora latest with some optimizations.

Identity provider = CentOS( FreeIPA)

Database server = CentOS(Postgres)

Web servers = CentOS podman(nginx)

FreeBSD for ZFS fileserver has been solid and dependable like nothing I have ever worked with before - it is hard to believe that it is free in cost and open source. I probably would not even think about running FreeBSD for compute nodes because it is not its thing.... almost all research software in the wild are being written with Linux in mind.

The most used feature of docker in our org is image distribution. Make an image once, and you can be sure the same code runs on stage, prod, and dev desktops.

This feature seems to be missing here.

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