Containers got popular at at time when there were an increasingly number of people that were finding it hard to install software on their system locally - especially if you were, for instance, having to juggle multiple versions of ruby or multiple versions of python and those linked to various major versions of c libraries.
Unfortunately containers have always had an absolutely horrendous security story and they degrade performance by quite a lot.
The hypervisor is not going away anytime soon - it is what the entire public cloud is built on.
While you are correct that containers do add more layers - unikernels go the opposite direction and actively remove those layers. Also, imo the "attack surface" is by far the smallest security benefit - other architectural concepts such as the complete lack of an interactive userland is far more beneficial when you consider what an attacker actually wants to do after landing on your box. (eg: run their software)
When you deploy to AWS you have two layers of linux - one that AWS runs and one that you run - but you don't really need that second layer and you can have much faster/safer software without it.
Unfortunately containers have always had an absolutely horrendous security story and they degrade performance by quite a lot.
The hypervisor is not going away anytime soon - it is what the entire public cloud is built on.
While you are correct that containers do add more layers - unikernels go the opposite direction and actively remove those layers. Also, imo the "attack surface" is by far the smallest security benefit - other architectural concepts such as the complete lack of an interactive userland is far more beneficial when you consider what an attacker actually wants to do after landing on your box. (eg: run their software)
When you deploy to AWS you have two layers of linux - one that AWS runs and one that you run - but you don't really need that second layer and you can have much faster/safer software without it.