Maybe I have an incomplete understanding of Docker and LXC, but I feel like this is retreading a lot of ground that Joyent has covered with SmartOS. Virtualization with KVM, networking with Crossbow, and VM exporting with ZFS datasets have all been around for the past few years without getting all of this attention.
KVM has more performance overhead than LXC. Sure, SmartOS has "zones" which are a similar concept, but then you're stuck with the SmartOS (Solaris) userspace. Plus, with LXC the physical host is running Linux, so hardware compatibility is less of a concern.
What are you missing in the SmartOS user space? This is a genuine question and not a troll. SNGL (http://www.joyent.com/blog/jonathan-perkins-on-why-smartos-i...) takes a shot at addressing the "comfort level" problem, but I'd like to understand if the problem is a technical one.
pkgsrc (http://www.pkgsrc.org) does a good job at making sure most packages you'd need are available.
I've grown more and more frustrated with the direction of Linux distributions over the past couple of years that I'm mostly avoiding new installations. I've been using OpenSolaris derived distributions for a while for ZFS, but I've come to the realization that SmartOS covers the majority of my general computing needs as well. Anything I write and deploy goes on SmartOS.
For tools that won't work on SmartOS for a technical reason, I'm using FreeBSD more. My firewalls have been OpenBSD for quite some time.
I haven't personally used SmartOS, but from my experience with Solaris 11, package management and availability wasn't great. Many common packages weren't available, some were only available through a semi-maintained community repository (OpenCSW), and other things were difficult to build due to non-GNU Solaris components (even when GCC and GNU tools were installed).
PS: I don't mean any disrespect towards OpenCSW, the packages that were there saved me a ton of trouble earlier this year. Packaging is tough.
BTW, Solaris 11 and OpenIndiana support Linux Branded zones. These have a linux user land and are mostly syscall compatible with Linux, so many linux programs can be run on them as is. I suspect that SmartOS took that out, but OmniOS (the Illumos distribution I'm using) still has that feature.
With SmartOS, you get the netbsd userland and package system rather than the Solaris one. For the most part, this means it is more likely to just have what you want and be easier to build for.
but as the other poster mentioned it uses pkgsrc which used to be the NetBSD package system but has been adopted more widely. you can even use it in Linux. it has a lot of packages.
When I was using it, KVM had some small memory and CPU overhead, but it's a fair point.
> ...so hardware compatibility is less of a concern.
That's definitely a problem. I'd very much like for SmartOS to branch out from just Intel, but they seem to be keeping development centered around the hardware they use for Joyent Cloud.
I havent used smartos, but you can only do solaris containers now? IIRC around the Indiana release one of the demos was running a RHEL5 container. I also seem to recall at least one person getting deb working.
