Linux Containers

linuxcontainers.org is an umbrella project that provides a vendor- and distribution-neutral environment for developing Linux container technologies. It solves the problem of running full Linux systems in isolated environments, offering both containers and virtual machines. System containers deliver an experience close to a virtual machine but without the overhead of a separate kernel or simulated hardware, making them efficient for running complete Linux distributions.

The project includes several active tools. Incus is a container and virtual-machine manager that scales from a single laptop to a cluster of up to 50 servers, handling storage and networking. LXC is a low-level Linux container runtime with tools, templates, and language bindings. LXCFS is a FUSE filesystem that provides overlay files for system information and a cgroupfs tree for unprivileged writes. Distrobuilder is an image building tool that uses YAML definitions and supports multiple output formats and distributions. IncusOS is an immutable OS platform designed specifically to run Incus, with boot security and full disk encryption.

The project is aimed at developers and system administrators who need to run full Linux system containers or virtual machines in development, testing, or production environments. The tools are open source and available for download; specific packaging details such as free plans, trials, or editions are not mentioned on the provided pages.