Programming

The Linux kernel itself doesn't really express an opinion -- it's a kernel, it enables you to do most things -- but it's Docker itself that imposes an opinion. And I say this after Docker Engine has basically delegated the runtime to containerd. At bottom, Docker has some serious baggage that needs to eventually be addressed, chiefly IMO the sorry state of networking.

What was done to make Docker usable initially has reared its ugly head a decade later, such as a focus on only supporting Legacy IP and NAT, with very little regard for IPv6. For example, Docker does do IPv6 today but only with NAT66 and zero support for DHCP6-PD upstream routing. This makes it incompatible to how actual v6 networks are set up, where NAT is neither desirable nor necessary. Docker's idea of networking is so very 1990s that it's genuinely stifling any improvements beyond the server/client TCP/UDP model.

All the meanwhile, Kubernetes is built atop sensible networking on Linux, and the BSDs have had solid networking primitives for decades. Linux is not the problem, IPv6 is not the problem, BSD is not the problem; it's just Docker being stuck because of a lack of vision and too many users dependent on the existing behavior.

Credit where it's due, Docker images defined as files and stores as artifacts in a central repository are a genuine innovation, and that's precisely what BSD Bastille brings to BSD jails. So in 2026, where the OCI specification has genericized Docker images, anything that's Docker-specific is slowly losing relevance.