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EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

easyos.org

11–20 of 94 posts

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#12

TBH, it doesn't look "easy" at all. Plus, why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system?

> why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system?

Because that is how we make progress. Try different approaches, learn and evolve the ecosystem. That is how we got usable containers in the first place, it's not a new idea and variants have been around for decades. But only now we've seen it evolve in to something usable.

At least they are trying to solve problems. It might not be the best/right solution, hell it might not be an improvement, but if we don't try, we will never learn.

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#13
post #9
post #7

If everything is a container, does that mean processes have failed?

Not really, for shared ressources, it was not that long before realizing that isolation was necessary for memory, storage has been has been managed via fs with rights since sharing files between processes is handy, shared networking as been a problem from day 1 (port numbers assignation). Container just homogenise the paradygm for all resources: strict isolation by default, else explicit sharing.

Feels even more OS360/IBM :)

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#15
post #14
post #7

If everything is a container, does that mean processes have failed?

I’d personally say that the concept of users and user groups have failed, at least on systems that have only one user.

Or are at least misnamed. (Not that I have a better suggestion!)

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#17
If EasyOS is specifically for containers, I do not see a container image at the LXC/LXD repository at https://us.images.linuxcontainers.org/

Even Kali Linux has a container image at https://us.images.linuxcontainers.org/

edit: If anyone at EasyOS wants to add a container image, see as an example the PR for Kali, https://github.com/lxc/distrobuilder/pull/179

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#18

TBH, it doesn't look "easy" at all. Plus, why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system?

The project is running at least since 2017. Maybe it was less « yet another containerization system » at that time?

Docker was in full swing in 2017, just like LXC. Even rkt predates it, I'd say

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#19
post #12

TBH, it doesn't look "easy" at all. Plus, why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system?

> why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system? Because that is how we make progress. Try different approaches, learn and evolve the ecosystem. That is how we got usable containers in the first place, it's not a new idea and variants have been around for decades. But only now we've seen it evolve in to something usable. At least they are trying to solve problems. It might not be the best/…

I get that but this is not an "unsolved problem" IMO. Anyway anybody is 100% free to use their time as they prefer, it just makes me wonder if there are/were real technical, unpatchable limits in the already existing solutions or it's just a (totally reasonable) case of NIH.

Re: EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers

#20
post #12

TBH, it doesn't look "easy" at all. Plus, why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system?

> why re-inventing the wheel and create yet another containerization system? Because that is how we make progress. Try different approaches, learn and evolve the ecosystem. That is how we got usable containers in the first place, it's not a new idea and variants have been around for decades. But only now we've seen it evolve in to something usable. At least they are trying to solve problems. It might not be the best/…

As a long time BSD and UNIX user, I disagree with the premise that containers have only recently been usable. Even on Linux, solutions like Proxmox made containers incredibly useful in the pre-LXC / pre-Docker days. And that’s discounting FreeBSD jails, Solaris Zones, etc which have existed a lot longer.

If anything, Docker just made containers trendy (they gave more talks at more conversations, etc) when before it was seen as a niche toy compared to virtualisation which few had heard of and fewer had bothered to look into. However being trendy doesn’t mean better nor easier to use.

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