bootc

Transactional, in-place operating system updates using OCI/Docker container images. bootc is the key component in a broader mission of bootable containers.

The original Docker container model of using "layers" to model applications has been extremely successful. This project aims to apply the same technique for bootable host systems - using standard OCI/Docker containers as a transport and delivery format for base operating system updates.

The container image includes a Linux kernel (in e.g. /usr/lib/modules), which is used to boot. At runtime on a target system, the base userspace is not itself running in a container by default. For example, assuming systemd is in use, systemd acts as pid1 as usual - there's no "outer" process.

Status

At the current time, bootc has not reached 1.0, and it is possible that some APIs and CLIs may change. For more information, see the 1.0 milestone.

However, the core underlying code uses the ostree project which has been powering stable operating system updates for many years. The stability here generally refers to the surface APIs, not the underlying logic.