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LinuxKit

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1
Ubuntu

76.8K
56.5K
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LinuxKit vs Ubuntu: What are the differences?

  1. Installation Process: LinuxKit is designed for building container images, so its installation process is streamlined and minimal, focusing on the essentials required for container deployment. On the other hand, Ubuntu is a full-fledged operating system that comes with a wide range of features and packages, resulting in a more complex installation process with various configuration options.

  2. Resource Usage: LinuxKit is optimized for minimal resource usage due to its focus on running containers efficiently. It is lightweight and modular, allowing users to include only the components they need for their specific use case. In contrast, Ubuntu is a more traditional operating system with numerous built-in services and features that may lead to higher resource consumption when compared to LinuxKit.

  3. Maintenance and Updates: LinuxKit follows a minimalist approach to maintenance and updates, with the emphasis on simplicity and speed. It provides a more streamlined process for managing updates and patches, catering to container-based environments that require frequent changes. Conversely, Ubuntu has a more comprehensive update system with a larger package repository and support for a wide range of software, resulting in a more involved maintenance process.

  4. Community Support: Ubuntu, being one of the most popular Linux distributions, has a vast and active community that provides extensive support, documentation, and resources for users. This community-driven approach ensures that users can easily find solutions to their issues and access a wealth of knowledge. In contrast, LinuxKit, while backed by Docker, may have a smaller community compared to Ubuntu, resulting in potentially fewer resources and support options available for users.

  5. Customization Options: LinuxKit offers a high level of customization options, allowing users to tailor their container images and operating system configurations to their specific requirements. With a modular design, users can select and include only the components needed, resulting in lean and efficient deployments. Ubuntu, while also customizable, may have more pre-installed packages and features that cannot be easily removed, potentially leading to a less streamlined and tailored environment compared to LinuxKit.

  6. Target Audience: LinuxKit is primarily targeted towards developers and organizations looking to create lightweight, secure, and portable container images for their applications. Its focus on containerization makes it ideal for cloud-native environments and microservices architectures. On the other hand, Ubuntu caters to a broader audience, including desktop users, servers, and cloud deployments, providing a more versatile and comprehensive platform for various use cases.

In Summary, LinuxKit offers a minimalist, resource-efficient, and customizable approach to building container images, tailored for cloud-native environments, while Ubuntu provides a full-featured, versatile operating system with extensive community support and a broader target audience.

Decisions about LinuxKit and Ubuntu

Ubuntu is much more faster over Windows and helps to get software and other utilities easier and within a short span of time compared to Windows.

Ubuntu helps to get robustness and resiliency over Windows. Ubuntu runs faster than Windows on every computer that I have ever tested. LibreOffice (Ubuntu's default office suite) runs much faster than Microsoft Office on every computer that I have ever tested.

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Jerome/Zen Quah
Chose
UbuntuUbuntu
over
CentOSCentOS

Global familiarity, free, widely used, and as a debian distro feels more comfortable when rapidly switching between local macOS and remote command lines.

CentOS does boast quite a few security/stability improvements, however as a RHEL-based distro, differs quite significantly in the command line and suffers from slightly less frequent package updates. (Could be a good or bad thing depending on your use-case and if it is public facing)

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Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 7 upvotes · 263.6K views

At the moment of the decision, my desktop was the primary place I did work. Due to this, I can't have it blow up on me while I work. While Arch is interesting and powerful, Ubuntu offers (at least for me) a lot more stability and lets me focus on other things than maintaining my own OS installation.

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Pros of LinuxKit
Pros of Ubuntu
  • 1
    Open Source
  • 230
    Free to use
  • 96
    Easy setup for testing discord bot
  • 57
    Gateway Linux Distro
  • 54
    Simple interface
  • 9
    Don't need driver installation in most cases
  • 6
    Open Source
  • 6
    Many active communities
  • 3
    Software Availability
  • 3
    Easy to custom
  • 2
    Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu
  • 1
    Lightweight container base OS
  • 1
    Great OotB Linux Shell Experience

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Cons of LinuxKit
Cons of Ubuntu
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 5
      Demanding system requirements
    • 4
      Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian
    • 2
      Snapd installed by default
    • 1
      Systemd

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    What is LinuxKit?

    LinuxKit, a toolkit for building custom minimal, immutable Linux distributions. Designed for building and running clustered applications, including but not limited to container orchestration such as Docker or Kubernetes.

    What is Ubuntu?

    Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers.

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    What are some alternatives to LinuxKit and Ubuntu?
    CoreOS
    It is designed for security, consistency, and reliability. Instead of installing packages via yum or apt, it uses Linux containers to manage your services at a higher level of abstraction. A single service's code and all dependencies are packaged within a container that can be run on one or many machines.
    Packer
    Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images.
    Docker
    The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
    RancherOS
    It makes it simple to run containers at scale in development, test and production. By containerizing system services and leveraging Docker for management, the operating system provides a very reliable and easy to manage containers.
    Kubernetes
    Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
    See all alternatives