What do you mean? My Dockerfiles already use distro's package manager to install packages.
Do you you mean "create a long-lived LXC container and use distro's package manager to install packages as needed?" The problem with that approach is you have no idea how to duplicate the server, nor how to roll back the changes reliably. For example:
- Your distro upgraded a library, and the upgrade introduced a bug. For extra fun, this was not security upgrade so unattended-upgrade process did not install it, so only half of your servers have the bug.
- Your package list is incorrect. Somehow, your old server ended up with an extra package (previous software version? installed while trying to troubleshoot problems), and your new server does not have it.
- You have leftover files -- either from the previous version of your software, or from the package you have had installed before.
These are definitely fixable in LXC with enough effort -- after all, Docker is not magic, and you can achieve a lot with LXC + shell scripts, and even more with LXC + shell scripts + chef. However, Docker is just so much easier and reliable than writing these scripts by hand.
LXC is sane to me. Upon first glance it is understandable and works everytime.
I went all in with Docker, it was all fun and games up until I tried it in production, and I started relying heavily on it.
Docker introduces container linking voodoo which have burnt me badly. Sure enough voodoo comes with its upsides, we now have Kubernetes which obviously I think is very cool. Just far outside of my use case.
