Docker comes to a full circle with DIY Linux

A lightweight software running inside container that would host applications and be portable may sound like a far-fetched dream. But now after DockerCon 2017 convention unveiled LinuxKit that contains the Docker container that can be used to create skeleton Linux OS and also be portable made that dream into reality.

With the onset of LinuxKit, Docker came to a full circle with Linux distribution. The LinuxKit was developed with containerd, a daemon that runs with either Linux or Windows platforms and it is the essential piece that makes the kit portable or hyperscalers, cloud platforms or enterprises.

Patrick Chanezon, member of technical staff of Docker Enterprise Edition explains the importance of LinuxKit, “ Over the past four years, containers have changed all of the major technology platforms, whether they target the datacenter, the cloud, or IoT, and this opens up two opportunities,” Chanezon further explains. “ One is that with containers, the operating system itself can become more secure, lean, and portable, and two, to drive the container ecosystem to the next level and take it mainstream, we need some means of collaborate on components and share some tooling.”

Basically, Linuxkit is minimal, hardened Linux kernel with all the OS services running on top of kernel and inside the containers. It has an ISO of 35 MB and full application around 100 MB. It has smaller disk and smaller memory capacity requirements and the whole application is boxed inside the software containers. It also cannot be hacked with malicious code as the application is sandboxed and the file system is mounted where the code is running and thus making it isolated.

At DockerCon, the Docker also launched a different project called Moby project that is a build system for creating a container service and runs internally at Docker to build its platforms, written in Go programming language. It initially contains around 80 individual components for creating the base.

Since it is a service not a program, it doesn’ t need code or other companies to donate their code to use it. These changes are a welcome in IT environment which has been trying to bring platforms together.