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An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

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Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#41

Post by squarefoot »

dharmab wrote: post #17
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #16

Interesting that alpine didn't get mentioned, i thought that was the most common option for a slim Linux running inside containers.

Alpine is a general purpose OS; You can run it as a desktop or server OS on real hardware.

> You can run it as a desktop or server OS on real hardware.

And it literally rocks at that. I would strongly encourage everyone with an old or small pc/laptop/sbc/whatever that is too resource limited to run a "regular" distro, to try Alpine on it. The amount of resources saved thanks to using musl instead of glibc is astounding.

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#42

Post by trufas »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works? I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

For the UI part cockpit [1] lets you manage containers (amongst many other things). I use it with fedora for my home server and rarely feel the need to drop into the command line in my day to day.

[1] https://cockpit-project.org/

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#43

Post by Fnoord »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works? I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

HypriotOS (for ARM), but it has not been in development since 2019 or 2020.

Proxmox is neat and you can run any OS under the hood including the suggestions mentioned.

You could also go for NixOS and declare you need OCI (e.g. Docker or Podman) in your Nix config.

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#44

Post by Fnoord »

mardifoufs wrote: post #23
LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works? I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

Proxmox with native docker support would've been a dream. I know, it's easy to add it on top (since it's basically a layer over debian), but you still wouldn't get the native GUI support and the proxmox features that come with it. I don't know why they are so keen on not adding docker, and only focusing on LXC. LXC is fine, but it's pretty clear that it is far from being as popular or commonly used as Docker.

With Proxmox since it allows you to run a VM you can run any OS with say a recent Docker version. On that OS, you can run a web GUI for Docker, using Docker. For example, Portainer. Nginx reverse proxy and done.

Although personally, I prefer Podman over Docker.

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#45

Post by eschneider »

nfriedly wrote: post #32
eschneider wrote: post #3

Interesting article. For folks who need to put together their own distro, especially for embedded applications, Yocto and Buildroot both lower the barrier to rolling your own and getting exactly what you need to something quite reasonable.

+1 for Buildroot! I haven't done much with Yocto, but I had very good experiences with Buildroot, particularly with getting helpful answers to noob questions I posted on stack overflow. One was answered by Thomas Petazzoni who, I think, is one of the main people behind Buildroot.

I've used both in commercial products and I find Yocto to be more flexible than Buildroot, but the learning curve is less with Buildroot. Still, both get the job done and are reasonably documented and supported, so pick your poison. :>

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#46

Post by qbasic_forever »

candiddevmike wrote: post #30
capableweb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker Desktop is essentially an application, doesn't come close to being a OS or distribution.

A VM to run containers is a fairly large part of Docker Desktop...? https://www.docker.com/blog/the-magic-behind-the-scenes-of-d...

They're asking for an OS their computer can boot into natively.

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#47

Post by mikepurvis »

mardifoufs wrote: post #23
LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works? I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

Proxmox with native docker support would've been a dream. I know, it's easy to add it on top (since it's basically a layer over debian), but you still wouldn't get the native GUI support and the proxmox features that come with it. I don't know why they are so keen on not adding docker, and only focusing on LXC. LXC is fine, but it's pretty clear that it is far from being as popular or commonly used as Docker.

VMware has a thing that's basically this also: https://vmware.github.io/vic-product/

But I've never quite understood the appeal. Is it about running untrusted containers with VM-level isolation? Or having a familiar GUI for managing and lifecycling them? Something else?

Fundamentally, I worry that mixing VMs and containers is more likely to end up with the worst of both worlds rather than the best— basically you get the slow bootup of starting the kernel every time, but none of the application-level benefits of sharing base layer storage or mounting the same shared volume to multiple containers at once.

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#48

Post by jiggawatts »

As a person who only occasionally needs Linux for specific purposes, something I‘d like is a well-supported mainstream distro for lightweight, high performance servers. Think NGINX, routers, local web proxies, that kind of thing.

Something akin to BSD but Linux. Ideally something that supports a two-stage deployment where you compile for the exact target CPU and then the final thing has no extraneous components at all.

Maybe Nix?

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#49

Post by Eisenstein »

jiggawatts wrote: post #48

As a person who only occasionally needs Linux for specific purposes, something I‘d like is a well-supported mainstream distro for lightweight, high performance servers. Think NGINX, routers, local web proxies, that kind of thing. Something akin to BSD but Linux. Ideally something that supports a two-stage deployment where you compile for the exact target CPU and then the final thing has no extraneous components at al…

Why not use BSD though?

Re: An overview of single-purpose Linux distributions

#50

Post by mikepurvis »

dicknuckle wrote: post #9
LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

This is one of those things that I've always been too scared to ask so I'm just going to ask it now: Is there a distro designed exclusively for running docker (and perhaps other) containers that also contains a friendly web UI for people who have no idea how docker actually works? I'm familiar with Proxmox, but it doesn't natively support docker.

RancherOS if you're looking to use something heavily tested but it's got a few weird features like most of the OS also being in containers. If you want something light to play with and get a vanilla docker experience, your best bet is likely Boot2Docker with Portainer.

When I last used Portainer on my home setup, the support for configuration-as-code deployment seemed pretty experimental— basically you could roll out a docker-compose config from a URL or upload as a one-off effort, but IIRC it had no ability to track that URL for changes, or update an already-deployed container set to a new configuration. I think you couldn't even give it a URL requiring authentication maybe?

All of this left me feeling like the devs had different goals than I did as a user.

But the current iteration seems like k8s/helm are first-class features now, so yeah, should definitely look again.

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