Linux Hackers Rebuild Internet From Silicon Valley Garage

Applications are like cogs in a giant piece of machinery. You can set up the machine to run a particular way, and even have parts of the machine independent of other parts.

Eventually parts get old and break down, or a flaw is found. This part needs to either be replaced or upgraded. With slotted services (CoreOS), you can replace an individual part and only affect that part of the machine, as long as it's not integral to the entire machine.

But the machine is complex. Sometimes you have to change how fast output shaft spins, or the gearing on a transmission. Or perhaps some other part of the machine's operation has to change, and that impacts this part because they connect to each other through more gears and pulleys. (comparison: API/ABI changes, database changes, network or protocol changes)

All slotted services do is provide momentary independence. They do not reduce overall support, and they only ease maintenance for that particular service. All other complex facets of server and service maintenance remain the same. The features of CoreOS - service discovery, systemd, a minimal OS, integrated deployment, etc - can all be provided with traditional linux distributions. CoreOS doesn't do anything new or difficult.

On top of that, by using such a specialized system to run your apps, you lose all the flexibility of having a full linux OS to troubleshoot and debug from. You now have to rely on them building on all the components that already exist in regular Linux world, like debuggers, tracers, sniffers, profilers, etc. You'll have to slip all that into your application deploy to troubleshoot a weird one-off bug. And forget about ever having a service contract that requires a supported OS like RHEL or Ubuntu.

This is a product designed to make them money via service and support contracts. In that sense, they may be successful. But as a sysadmin I know there's nothing this provides that I can't get from existing open source tools. Rebuilding the internet? More like repackaging.

Core OS is awesome. The problems it is solving (discussed previously on HN see links others have posted) are needed. This is the kind of idea that's really going to change deployment and managing distributed applications and services for the better. This is really important for where I work, because we want to be able to distribute our application to others, and I think we'll be able to do this with CoreOS. It is something we are still investigating seriously, because working with enterprise level companies we need some option that doesn't exist yet that works with our infrastructure. For many large companies, web based SAAS doesn't work with their security requirements.

And really, this time around there are a great batch of companies featuring some of the Cloudkickers/Rackers who worked on CK (polvi, ifup) and Floobits (ggreer, kansface) who I know are dedicated to meaningful technology. You can't expect MSM to get into the nitty gritty, but I found this article to do a good job to import the benefits one can derive from CoreOS in a way that is more accessible to non-engineers.

I like what the CoreOS guys are doing and I don't mean to be mean, but this is clearly a sponsored post. No technical details, just plain dream-marketing bullshit.

For those of you familiar with Docker (http://docker.io): CoreOS is a linux distribution designed to get your machine from zero to Docker as quickly and reliably as possible. It is stripped down to the bare minimum, since its primary job is to run Docker, which itself has almost no dependencies. As a result CoreOS boots very quickly, and is hard to get in an inconsistent state because it has less moving parts.

I think it's a great example of what becomes possible with the Separation of Concerns allowed by container-based deployment. With docker containers as the standard "glue", the components in your system can be less tightly coupled, and as a result they can be simpler and more reliable.

And because each component can be chosen independently of the others, it's easier for new alternatives to be adopted, because you don't have to rip out the whole system to try them out. For example, in a docker-based system, you could easily try out CoreOS on a few machines alongside your existing Red Hat or Debian setup, because they can all run Docker. You could try StriderCI or Buildbot instead of Jenkins for continuous integration, because they can all build docker containers. You could try Nginx instead of Apache for some of your applications, because they can all be bundled into a docker container. And so on.

TLDR: containers lead to better interop between tools, which leads to more innovation and competition on the tools, which leads to better tools, which leads to happier engineers! :)

Classic MSM: refer to an offsite item, in this case here, without linking to it (just the site):

Show HN: CoreOS, a Linux distro for containers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6128700

Also this, which has some general discussion:

CoreOS Vagrant Images: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6149638

It's taken me too long to realise that this really is just LXC or similar (OpenVZ), plus some nice directory service akin to JNDI.

Analogy wise, a Linux version of a Java Application Server cluster? EAR or WAR files are not meant to contain their config, but look it up via JNDI lookups. They can be stopped/started/updated in place. They share common libs, and bring their own along with them. There are standard and vendor specific tools to monitor performance, provide messaging, manage resources, etc. etc.

Edit: If that's what it is, I say HURRAH!!! because I've long felt that virtual machines were a failure in our ability to get the OS level design for dependency/config management "right".

The article seems a bit hyperbolic with captions like this one:

  ...are building a new kind of computer operating system

That's more than exaggerating slightly. If they were talking about a completely new OS architecture, I might accept that statement.

So much fluff here and so little technical detail.

I'd say the article is poorly titled, but what Polvi and crew are doing is pretty important.

Linux has always had a big problem of bloat in the OS, when it reality the OS should be stripped down to a base level (the Core as it were) and then everything else should be managed as an addition. This is basically what most of the BSDs do, and PC-BSD has gone even further with it and basically "containerized" OS additions.

Linux needs this, I'm really happy to see this being done.

Is this just a re-implementation of SmartOS using the Linux kernel?

The article mentions someone giving a tutorial on linux drivers and someone building a USB thermometer(quite tangential to the story). I've been interested in this topic for quite a while but have found it a bit inaccessible.. can anyone point at a good book or simple project I can work with to develop my chops? I'm pretty handy with Arduino and RasberryPI. But I've never written any code in kernel space and want to satiate my curiosity.

Thanks in advance if anyone replies.

If you wanted to rebuild the Internet, which runs largely on Linux, you may want to rebuild Linux first. Or throw it out and start with something else.

  Why can't the Internet be just *one* machine?

im also forking chrome to create a new sort of browser (dont know if we can call it that way) , not from my garage, but from a room turned into a office :)

I would definitely like to get in touch with this guys if possible, maybe to exchange some experience since we share the same codebase even if its for different purposes