Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor • Hacker News Board

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#21

Post by virtuous_sloth » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

kosinus wrote: post #6

seabrookmx wrote: post #4

Not _technically_ a hypervisor since these are Linux (system) containers and use the same cgroup magic under the hood as docker/containerd. But this is definitely neat. I've found Incus quite handy for development environments, and a good compliment to docker.

You can also start QEMU/KVM powered VMs with Incus, I assume that's also possible with IncusOS?

Yes. And most importantly, the Incus API and CLI client (which uses the API) presents a consistent management language for system containers (the default ones with a init/systemd-controlled userspace), OCI containers (unpacked, not layered), and VMs. Well, as consistent as makes sense for each. There are a number of options/properties that are specific to each, but it feels very consistent.

The Incus server inside IncusOS is the same software. The difference is as little userspace as possible alongside it (not even busybox).

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#22

Post by johntash » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

genshii wrote: post #10

I used Proxmox for years to run a fairly comprehensive homelab, and a few months ago replaced the entire thing with Incus (on a debian host, haven't tried IncusOS yet). Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox. One thing in particular is permissions in unprivileged containers. In Proxmox, you have to do a bunch of somewhat confusing ID mapping. In Incus, it's as simple as settin…

Can Incus do regular vms too, or only LXCs? I think I looked at it before but wrote it off because I still have some workloads that have to be in VMs.

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#23

Post by octagons » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

johntash wrote: post #22

genshii wrote: post #10

I used Proxmox for years to run a fairly comprehensive homelab, and a few months ago replaced the entire thing with Incus (on a debian host, haven't tried IncusOS yet). Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox. One thing in particular is permissions in unprivileged containers. In Proxmox, you have to do a bunch of somewhat confusing ID mapping. In Incus, it's as simple as settin…

Can Incus do regular vms too, or only LXCs? I think I looked at it before but wrote it off because I still have some workloads that have to be in VMs.

Yes, it can do both. The image server will build for both options if possible, so you have to specify “—vm” on the command line creating the domain.

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#24

Post by kwk1 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

aborsy wrote: post #13

genshii wrote: post #10

I used Proxmox for years to run a fairly comprehensive homelab, and a few months ago replaced the entire thing with Incus (on a debian host, haven't tried IncusOS yet). Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox. One thing in particular is permissions in unprivileged containers. In Proxmox, you have to do a bunch of somewhat confusing ID mapping. In Incus, it's as simple as settin…

Incus is more comparable to LXD than proxmox. IncusOS is different though. LXD containers also are unprivileged by default.

Incus is specifically an LXD fork.

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#25

Post by madeforhnyo » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

guipsp wrote: post #15

aborsy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incus is more comparable to LXD than proxmox. IncusOS is different though. LXD containers also are unprivileged by default.

You might be mixing up LXC and LXD

From Incus main page:

> The Incus project was created by Aleksa Sarai as a community driven alternative to Canonical's LXD. Today, it's led and maintained by many of the same people that once created LXD.

Thé confusion si real

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#26

Post by udev4096 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

aborsy wrote: post #13

genshii wrote: post #10

I used Proxmox for years to run a fairly comprehensive homelab, and a few months ago replaced the entire thing with Incus (on a debian host, haven't tried IncusOS yet). Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox. One thing in particular is permissions in unprivileged containers. In Proxmox, you have to do a bunch of somewhat confusing ID mapping. In Incus, it's as simple as settin…

Incus is more comparable to LXD than proxmox. IncusOS is different though. LXD containers also are unprivileged by default.

Incus was an LXD fork in the very beginning but it's evolved a lot since then. Incus is far superior than LXD in number of ways

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#27

Post by octagons » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

I’ve been running an Incus cluster of 3 fairly beefy servers for about a year now. It’s my go-to recommendation for anyone wanting to setup a new virtualized environment.

One of my favorite features is how you can tag different cluster members for different architectures. In the same cluster, I can have traditional dual-socket x86 servers with a dozen DIMM slots as well as Raspberry Pis. The architecture tagging lets me strategize execution of ARM-based container workloads to be only on the Pis, or opt to run them via QEMU on the x86 platforms if that makes more sense in a particular scenario. Since I deal with a lot of embedded firmware, this offers a nice, flexible platform.

Stephen Graeber is also a long time contributor to the LXC project and his reasoning behind this fork and other changes are quite sound. I hope the project sees continued success. Stephen’s business model of offering consulting services for Incus systems also seems quite sound.

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#28

Post by udev4096 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

athoneycutt wrote: post #16

udev4096 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have switched to incus and it's really great. It's lightweight, has a working terraform provider, easy-to-use cli, pre-built images (LXC and VM) of major distros (while in proxmox, you have to create templates all the time for VMs), runs on any distro (on proxmox, you're stuck with debian), clustering is nice, supports bunch of storage drivers (dir, btrfs, ceph, zfs), simple web UI and active community. The project…

Though IncusOS itself is based on Debian so for the first point against Proxmox I guess using Incus on your OS of choice would be better?

IncusOS is different. You can use incus itself on all the major distros: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/installing/

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#29

Post by exographicskip » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

victorbjorklund wrote: post #19

genshii wrote: post #10

I used Proxmox for years to run a fairly comprehensive homelab, and a few months ago replaced the entire thing with Incus (on a debian host, haven't tried IncusOS yet). Incus is amazing and it makes so many things so much easier compared to Proxmox. One thing in particular is permissions in unprivileged containers. In Proxmox, you have to do a bunch of somewhat confusing ID mapping. In Incus, it's as simple as settin…

Interesting. Is there anything else that is better than proxmox? Like performance etc?

I like harvester by suse

Re: Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor

#30

Post by chaz6 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

It seems to suffer from a chicken and egg problem. To get an image you are supposed to run `incus remote get-client-certificate` to put into the "image customizer", and you cannot generate an image without it. So how do you get started?