It has been two years already since the Linux Containers project forked Canonical’s LXD project as Incus. Now joining the Incus family is IncusOS as an immutable Linux OS built atop a Debian base with OpenZFS file-system support and designed around running containers with Incus.
Incus lead developer Stéphane Graber announced today IncusOS as what’s been in the works the past year. IncusOS is described by the project as:
“IncusOS is a modern immutable OS image that’s specifically designed to run Incus.
It provides atomic updates through an A/B update mechanism using distinct partitions and it enforces boot security through UEFI Secure Boot and a TPM 2.0 module.Under the hood, it’s built on a minimal Debian 13 base, using the Zabbly builds of both the Linux kernel, ZFS and Incus, providing the latest stable versions of all of those. We rely a lot on the systemd tooling to handle image builds (mkosi), application installation (sysext), system updates (sysupdate) and a variety of other things from network configuration to partitioning.
It’s a very locked down environment where no local or remote shell access is provided. The entire system is configured and operated through the Incus API, using either TLS client certificate authentication or external OIDC authentication.”
Those wanting to try out this Linux OS for running Incus or learning more about this new IncusOS effort can do so via the LinuxContainers.org announcement.
