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Discussion on: An OS where containers are apps. 🐳

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manishfoodtechs profile image
manish srivastava • Edited

Thought experiment.

Good nice you thought for an experiment

Could an OS exist that was hardly an OS at all, and all of its "apps" where infact containers, the GUI would be provided by the OS.

Yes there are os images which are very minimal. An cloud image is 95MB compared to 1.04 GB of its .iso full image.

GUI is you get with desktop environment. KDE, Gnome many

What would developing on such an OS be like, would it mean you could effectively write any technology stack and have it ship as if it where native.
Containers main purpose is to allow different os compatibility in container. Remember, there is difference between KVM and OS containers. With KVM you get virtual machine. This is why windows vm is possible in linux. But with containers, it's not possible to run a window container in linux. But windows wsl2 is allowing linux containers in windows machine.

Maybe it would be more secure by providing isolation for untrusted applications.

Okay there is doubt on security by docker . Actually, docker doesn't provide firewall protection, All users are root for container and thirdly, it has Dockerd daemon. There are certain alternatives like podman which is Rootless. Gvisor, a google project to create separate kernel for docker containers.

Could it maybe run these containers cross distributions and provide a compatibility layer for Windows Mac and Linux.

You craft out containers based on resources of that OS. Linux in linux , windows in windows... But WSL 2 is going good

I thought this was an interesting question, I am a docker newbie trying to learn more.

1) Docker in layman language:

2) Docker Security

3) Create a small personal desktop in docker

For more articles browse my profile.

Do you think this would work or even be successful?

Yes it can work. But it depends upon program you want to run.please remember docker doesn't improve experience . You share same resources with containers. For example: a video player, VLC. ON HOST and inside Docker image will require same resources. Another, networking is tricky.
Systemd is unavailable... So mostly it difficult to install many generic programs on docker.

Also note each docker will require its own gui / xrdp.

Also, meet cloud brothers: three parts story explaining cloud computing, docker etc much...

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Amazing info as always Manish thank you sir.

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manishfoodtechs profile image
manish srivastava

Hey Adam, I always see you doing something creative... Good going. Keep it up.