[coffeesn0b]

Could you define what is not deterministic about containerized computing?

Examples of things we are controlling are timers for food, cameras that can recognize and track food items, drying machines that will automatically trigger and fry fries.

[loco5niner]

Oh! took me a second to realize it was a typo... FRYing machines, not DRYing machines ;-)

[TickleSteve]

Linux is general is not a real-time system, in that you cannot get deterministic response time from it.

For example I'm guessing it doesn't matter if one of your timers are a second late due to Linux deciding to swap a process out or prioritise some upgrade check but imagine if your time constraints were a lot tighter.

Similarly if you're attempting to track food on a conveyor belt and Linux decides to prioritise the file indexer on your filesystem... oops, a lettuce has been thrown on the floor.

Real-time operating systems exist for a reason.

[coffeesn0b]

Our tolerance requirements for synchronicity are broad enough that we can tolerate blips like this... at the end of the day we are automating away some simple human interactions (ie; fry the fries or track the food), we aren’t performing surgery with these systems.

So far we’ve been satisfied with Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact) and it’s overall capabilities.

Also, don’t forget that cost at scale is a big factor... doing things perfectly but expensively is not profitable at 2k locations.