for the rest of HN:
Isn't one of Dockers killer features the layered file system? Using rsync for making new jails seems like it's going to be real slow for reprovisioning.
What kind of things to people use FreeBSD for? I wonder if they're really rooting for a docker coming to their environment.
ISPs have been big users of FreeBSD. While HN is a lot of startups going on about agile, continuous integration, Jenkins, etc., those of us in enterprise and ISP environments like stability and little change.
When deploying a new mail system for 100k users, for example, I want to set it up, get it working perfectly, and then not have to touch it (exception: security updates, of course) for the next few years.
FreeBSD is rock solid and lets you do just that. FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE was announced in November 2009, if memory serves, and I still have DNS servers running 8.x that I rarely have to touch (and won't have to until June 30, 2015). It Just Works(TM).
Use can mount anything you like to any mount point in jails. (Even without ZFS, with ZFS it's a different story.) I don't know about this CBSD, but ejail and qjail (similar tools) do that for you — they mount some “base” system in jail. Then you mount what you want, pkg install what want etc
> I wonder if they're really rooting for a docker coming to their environment.
WHAT? No, it's with docker GNU/Linux is finally going to have something like jails, which FreeBSD have has for decades.
Yes, exactly.
HN for start. And then there's (off the top of my head) Netflix, NetApp, Juniper, Sony, countless ISPs, DuckDuckGo...
(scroll to "Hosting History")
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fne...
Further, it may interest you to know that we (JohnCompanies) used FreeBSD and jail to provide the first VPS services[1], back in fall of 2001. The VPS as we know it (which appears to be dying in the world of EC2-style instances) came into existence as a direct result of jail.
[1] Yes, Verio did have that bizarro VPS-like service that cost an arm and a leg a year or so earlier, but the VPS as you think of it was first provided (AFAIK) by JohnCompanies in 2001.