Bastille
Hacker ApprovedJail manager in Developer tools
Recommended as a simple, modern tool for creating and managing FreeBSD jails, with Dockerfile-like templates that give a workflow similar to Docker.
10 people recommended Bastille in Hacker News comments and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 13 comments.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- mixed feelings
- 0
- warn against or regret it
- 2
The record
Recommended in 5 of 12 months
In 7 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 7 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 40% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 13 of the 15 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, easy jail management
“I’ve found Bastille really simple and great for creating and managing jails”
Comment from 5 Mar 2026 in “Jails for NetBSD – Kernel Enforced Isolation and Native Resource Control” “a system like Bastille that just wants to get out of your way”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again” “It's a nice and modern jail manager.”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Back to FreeBSD: Part 1” - Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again”
Docker-like workflow on FreeBSD
“I highly reccomend installing Bastille FreeBSD instead and let the bastille tooling do the heavy lifting”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSD” “Bastille offers a pretty much identical workflow to docker, but built on FreeBSD jails”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Back to FreeBSD: Part 1” “BastilleBSD is another great way to run FreeBSD+jails using their templates”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host” - Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Fiddly setup for some users
“it felt too fiddly to set up”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Back to FreeBSD: Part 1” Not quite mature yet
“I don’t think it’s there yet”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I've built a nice home server OS”
What people said
13 of the 15 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“BastilleBSD is another great way to run FreeBSD+jails using their templates”
“I don’t think it’s there yet”
“Sylve or Bastille is amazing for it. 1 liner jails setups etc.”
“I’ve found Bastille really simple and great for creating and managing jails”
“Bastille offers a pretty much identical workflow to docker, but built on FreeBSD jails”
“it felt too fiddly to set up”
“It's a nice and modern jail manager.”
“I highly reccomend installing Bastille FreeBSD instead and let the bastille tooling do the heavy lifting”
“It didn't take too long to transfer from iocage to Bastille.”
“Bastille is designed for deploying web applications in jails securely”
“Bastille is very nice to use.”
“a system like Bastille that just wants to get out of your way”
“it allows using Dockerfile-like 'templates' to provision jails”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.