Lightwhale 3, an immutable Linux OS for self-hosting Docker containers.

I wish there was something like this or talos or coreos but more generic: - immutable - a/b boot - declarative (like talos) But with choice of workload, like docker, k8s, qemu

Congrats on launching something (more than most of us will ever manage), but I am struggling to see why I would use this over something with more backing. There are a number of similar projects that have a very similar goal, but have the support of a large community and/or commercial sponsor:- Flatcar Container Linux: An open-source, immutable OS designed for automatic updates and large-scale container deployments.- Fedora CoreOS: A, secure, automatically updating operating system designed for running containerized applications, succeeding the original CoreOS.- Talos Linux: A modern, immutable, security-focused OS dedicated entirely to Kubernetes.- IncusOS: an immutable OS solely designed around safely and reliably running Incus.I think you need to more clearly explain how this is different. Again, congrats on the launch though.

Interesting - but how do I patch, upgrade and build my own iso?The source repository isn't very enlightening?> The actual repository here hosts the source code for Lightwhale, and is not of any interest for most people.> https://bitbucket.org/asklandd/lightwhale/src/master/

What's the recommended way to regularly backup the data used by containers running on Lightwhale?

This is relevant to what I have been learning about recently!I'm getting ready to launch an online game and I'm dealing with "how do I just run my game server on dozens of boxes without dealing with linux stuff".I don't really have an answer yet (leaning into "just get one really powerful box" lol), but my investigation into the problem so far has been pretty interesting.You can conceptualize the "my program + the OS" as a single program. It's not a pretty picture. Lots of global mutable state. (Also it randomly modifies itself??)The whole point of Docker appears to be "I just want to run my program", in the least painful way possible. Immutable Linux extends the "lean in the direction of sanity" idea. (The programming and OS worlds seem to be learning the same lessons, from different angles.)And then there's "it turns out the OS solves problems I don't have, while creating many new problems", which leads to Unikernels. Fun stuff ;)In a perfect world, I wouldn't need the OS at all. Docker gives me two Linuxes to worry about! The number of operating systems I want to worry about is zero!Which brings us to Unikernels! Just ditch the OS! Technically the right answer, except... now I'm a kernel developer? Maybe that's the least bad option, long term.

This is a Linux distro, not an OS!

I'm a novice in this space I think. I've self-hosted for over a decade and around 2019 I moved over to Unraid, which is generally pretty visual (web portal or configuring and doing maintenance). I find the web portal very easy. How does one interact with your home server OS? I assume it's all via terminal because there are no pictures on the website?

As long as there is software, you cannot shortcut the need for maintenance. Nothing is bug free, and telling people they will never need to upgrade/patch/maintain a system is a well-paved path to compromised systems.

So I’ve just set up my home server with Ubuntu server, installed docker with one line and I’m off to the races. What’s different/ exactly the value prop of this? You mention maintenance, of what exactly? Is your server a slimmed down version to run on less powerful hardware? Genuinely curious as I’m new to setting up a home server so seeing how this would benefit me.

I like the idea of something like this for swarm mode clusters; not sure if you’re focused on the home server aspect exclusively, but I’ll be following along.Kudos to the great project!