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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, as far as I know, Docker for Windows and Docker for Mac really are closed source freeware. My honest opinion is we should move away from it.

As for what to move to... That's definitely an open question. Docker for Windows is definitely one of the best developer experiences I've had on Windows because they put actual engineering work into it. All the same, I still found it buggier and less supported than Docker for Mac. At least on Windows, I wish we could combine the cool LXSS work with a development-only Docker implementation.

Ultimately, Docker should not be synonymous with containers anyway. Future versions of Kubernetes will not use Docker and instead run their own containers on top of libcontainer by default, as I understand it. I also feel rkt has a much nicer design than Docker, doing away with the daemon aspect of it. Hoping to see more development in the future.

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> one of the best developer experiences I've had on Windows because they put actual engineering work into it

Like, this is exactly what they're talking about, right? This is the user experience that they've improved because VCs have been willing to give them money because they show increases in MAUs.

Am I crazy here? You seem to be complaining about exactly the thing that you like

The app phoning home to do analytics is fine with me. I just want the download links so I don't have to sign in to download the app. I will almost definitely sign into the app so I can use the features where signing in are actual value adds. (Also, if they ever removed the direct links, it would really suck for automated deployments.)

But really, I don't care that strongly. I do, however, wish to use, if possible, an open source solution. Why? Because I had a problem with Docker for Windows and I couldn't debug it. As I understand it, this is actually pretty similar to the reasoning behind Linux being developed.

I want that too, but there's unfortunately nobody likely to do that work for free.

(I find it annoying that you have to hunt for the download link too, tbf. I just figure that, OK, that's how they make their $ to build their mostly excellent software)

I think the problem is who controls the container world. Companies like Facebook and Google do not build their businesses on developer tools, but they collectively benefit with open source. Docker may very well not benefit much from open source because their business is containers and sharing the secret sauce does not make them more money.

Er, any links about the Kubernetes changes? They spent multiple releases adopting and moving to CRI. Meaning any CRI implementation can be used in his where docker(shim) was previously used. This includes -- containerd, crio, kata, pouch, gvisor, and at least three more whose names I forget.

Hardcoding another container runtime would be disappointing to see and highly surprising.

Also, since no one anywhere in this thread is talking about it... You can get Dockers container execution engine without any of the "docker". Docker has spent significant time and presumably money splitting out `containerd` and I'm surprised it's not mentioned in this thread so far. It's compatible with Kuberenetes CRI, etc, etc.

Sorry, what I meant was that the default CRI implementation would be based on containerd. This is as I understood it as an outsider and may not be true.

edit: Here's an actual link. https://kubernetes.io/blog/2018/05/24/kubernetes-containerd-...

If you want lightweight virtual machine functionality I would recommend LXD/LXC.

If you want app virtualization and packaging, I have been pretty intrigued by what I have found out experimenting with `snaps`.

The biggest issue for me that I have hit with LXD/LXC is that host-to-container mount sharing is not as easy...which means I had to do some workflow alteration for moving from `docker` containers to `lxd` ones for existing projects...but otherwise I have been really happy with LXD.

Edit: And just to be clear, host-to-container mount sharing is possible, I just had to work at it and slightly alter my workflow to get the best solution.

Well, what I really want is to develop, test and utilize containers as part of my development process. For example, doing work in Docker containers allows reproducible, hermetic builds (importantly, it allows this, though it certainly doesn't guarantee or force it.)

Many containers that I develop or use will also be used in a Kubernetes cluster or at least as part of CD, so most importantly I want a local setup that mirrors to a degree what the remote setups look like.

Snaps provide something a bit different, more geared toward end users. I have no huge opinion regarding them, the isolation aspect is novel but unfortunately a bit of a PITA as of today.

Sounds like you would be more interested in LXD then.

LXD is more like virtual machines than containers, though. Also, in context of this thread, it doesn't solve much that Docker doesn't; after all, Docker for Linux is in fact fully open source, and even if it wasn't, Linux has no shortage of mature container implementations (like rkt.) For a developer on Mac or Windows, it'd be nice to have a universal dev tool, even if only to handle Linux containers.

> Linux has no shortage of mature container implementations (like rkt.)

As someone who is a maintainer of the core of what actually runs containers under Docker (runc), LXC (and by extension LXD) is _the_ most mature container implementation on Linux. I've worked with the LXC folks and I am constantly impressed how on-top-of-everything they are.

> As for what to move to... That's definitely an open question.

Is it really? I find that Linux is an excellent development platform, and also an excellent home-computer OS. I've been using it exclusively in a professional software-development context for over a decade now (prior to that my employer made me use Windows in addition to my Linux box), and I couldn't be happier.

I highly recommend https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy for MacOS. It predates docker for Mac but offers most of the same features while mostly being "just docker".

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