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Containers have rapidly become an essential part of modern data centers. Containers can be built in a variety of operating systems, so how should enterprises choose the most appropriate operating system to run their own containers?

When deploying a container, the head of research and development needs to know which features and functions of the operating system are critical to the application being released, and whether there are other factors that need to be considered (such as manageability and configuration flexibility). The situation and needs of different enterprises are different, and the choices are naturally different.

How do different operating systems compare in terms of features and basic functions? How do these differences affect the way they support applications? These are all important issues that we must consider. In this article, we will compare three representative operating systems:

Traditional full-function operating system

A general-purpose compact operating system

Operating system dedicated to containers

In each category, we choose two representative products that represent other full products or distributions in this category.

Through this article, you will be able to understand more clearly the differences between different operating system types. People in charge of IT will also have a better understanding of why developers can choose one operating system over another for containerized applications, and why they may support or question these choices.

Full-function operating system

What does "full-featured operating system" mean? Why is full functionality important in the case of container deployment? This section describes why the operating system used in traditional server deployments may also be the best answer when choosing an operating system for a container platform.

The first thing to know is that this kind of operating system is undoubtedly the most complete. If an application needs a particular feature or function, a full-featured operating system may be able to satisfy it. But this "complete" comes at a price: this type of operating system is the most demanding in terms of storage, memory, and CPU resources. At the same time, these features will also increase the scope of the operating system, providing more corners and gaps for potential users. Whether it's price cost or security risk, if these features of the operating system are required by the application, then these costs are easy to bear, but if only a small amount of functionality is needed, the cost-effectiveness is slightly lower.

The most appropriate use case for these full-featured operating systems is that the enterprise needs to deploy multiple different applications in a container on top of a single OS instance. In these cases, the operating system has a wide range of functions, which may be the most economical way to support application queues.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu has become the default operating system for many enterprises on servers, clouds, and even desktops. Canonical provides excellent support for Ubuntu, and Ubuntu offers a variety of downloadable formats, including utility packages, shell, features and feature sets needed to support the deployment of the Internet of things, containers, servers, or clouds.

Today, Ubuntu has begun to carve up an area once dominated by Red Hat Linux: Ubuntu's consistently good reputation and enterprise support make it a safe and "reasonable" choice for enterprise deployment. However, it is important to keep in mind that under any circumstances, "reasonable" does not necessarily mean "the best"-its full function also means that it is huge, and enterprises need to think about whether this weight and size is suitable for them.

CentOS

In the broad category of full-featured operating systems, Ubuntu has become a mainstream choice for enterprises. In addition, CentOS is another popular, community-driven open source operating system, which is compiled by the source code released by Red Hat Enterprise Linux in accordance with open source regulations.

CentOS emphasizes the community's contribution and support for features and functionality, while still building on the stability of its Red Hat foundation. Open source does not mean that CentOS is not used by large organizations-CentOS is used on the servers of the US National Laboratory and several major cloud providers. But Ubuntu claims to have faster updates than CentOS, including older but well-tested packages.

A streamlined operating system

Containers, which bring together as many functions as possible to create a complete application. So what features of this lean operating system lack in the "full" Linux distribution-is this important to your application? From another perspective, what are the advantages of deploying an application on a compact operating system that strips functionality to its limits?

The answer to the question is what exactly does your application require of the operating system, and whether a streamlined operating system can meet these basic requirements. If you are not well prepared, and you need to artificially add the various functions and Mini Program required by the application, then choosing this kind of compact operating system can be said to be a failure, because it has few advantages in terms of size and simplicity.

This section introduces the two distributions, BusyBox and Alpine Linux, and the benefits they can bring in the appropriate environment. The two operating systems are related-Alpine is based on BusyBox, but there are some key differences that allow users to choose between the two. These differences relate not only to specific functions and features, but also to supporting communities and ecosystems.

BusyBox

BusyBox is well suited for container deployment, coincidentally because it is not designed with containers in mind. BusyBox is called "Switzerland of embedded Linux" by its developers, and as a single small executable file, it contains all the functions required by most embedded applications. This also "forces" it to start deploying in a container-like way before container technology emerges.

BusyBox can be deployed using Linux or other POSIX operating systems as its basis and bundling them with many common Linux utilities. In this way, it becomes a compact single-file executable that contains many of the features of the "full" Linux distribution-- although many other feature options in these complete versions have been removed from BusyBox in the name of saving space.

Alpine Linux

As mentioned earlier, Alpine Linux is based on BusyBox, but it is based on earlier Linux releases, both in terms of goals and details. BusyBox is small because it is a single executable file, while Alpine Linux uses a hardened kernel to add security to the compact, simple goals of its predecessor, BusyBox.

Compared to BusyBox,Alpine Linux, it makes it easier for developers to add features. Its distribution is based on BusyBox and musl libraries, so Alpine Linux excels in these dimensions of ease of adding functionality or structural compactness.

Alpine Linux is a minimalist operating system that generates very small container images for deployment, and the hardened kernel makes it more suitable for production, development and deployment.

Container operating system

The container operating system is available out of the box and has built-in automation and container orchestration tools. They are designed and built as "host" operating systems-operating systems that host container operating systems such as Alpine and BusyBox. In that case, why aren't they an automatic choice for each container deployment?

The container operating system is characterized by not only software that supports containers, but software deployed using container technology. The "container always down" architecture means that the custom programs deployed are higher and more flexible, thus much more complex than traditional OS deployments. On the other hand, a "full container" architecture is not so easy for early organizations that move to containers, or for application deployments that are not necessarily suitable for container architectures.

For companies looking for container operating systems, Rancher OS and Container Linux are the two mainstream choices. This section will introduce their respective advantages to help developers make further choices according to their own circumstances.

RancherOS

Each process in RancherOS runs in a separate container managed by Docker. The optimization and dependence on Docker makes it possible for RancherOS to be extremely small and start very fast.

In addition to the basic performance benefits, RancherOS system services are defined and configured by Docker Compose. This dependency means that only the services required by the application are loaded and deployed, further accelerating and simplifying deployment. Through integration with cloud-init, deployment is once again simplified, resulting in extensive and high-speed automatic configuration and deployment.

Container Linux

CoreOS's Container Linux is designed for cloud-based container deployment. Container Linux has been acquired by Red Hat and is optimized for cluster deployment of public or private cloud infrastructure.

Container Linux, along with the kernel and necessary utilities, is deployed in a single executable file, while other utilities and functions are deployed in containers.

Container Linux has long been widely used and can be deployed on most public clouds. Being acquired by Red Hat did not slow its adoption. Container Linux is distributed with open source licenses and has an active developer community.

Conclusion

There are three major categories that can be used to deploy operating systems in containers. Which one should the development team choose?

Container operating systems such as RancherOS and Container Linux are well suited if the sole purpose of a particular server is to host containers. The automation, deployment speed, and consistent container architecture of this type of operating system make it the best choice for those who want to optimize the container hosting environment.

If you want to consider both container and non-container applications, there is no doubt that traditional Linux deployments such as Ubuntu and CentOS can also be used as container platforms. Their architecture, utilities, and feature lists will slow them down and require more system resources, but if startup speed and minimum resource consumption are not key considerations, then this type of operating system is a good choice.

Also of concern are extremely compact operating systems such as BusyBox and Alpine Linux, which are located between the two mentioned above. From the perspective of container deployment alone, such operating systems can meet the needs; however, if an enterprise has non-container applications with limited resources (such as applications for the Internet of things), these applications should also be considered as part of the overall application environment.

Understanding the differences between the capabilities and limitations of different types of operating systems is critical to any discussion of the OS platform used in production. With modern operating systems, the real consideration should not be satisfied with which operating system can work, but which operating system can do the work most effectively and efficiently.

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