Container Linux by CoreOS is an open source software project that provides system administrators and experienced users with a modern and minimal operating system designed for massive server deployments. It is not based on any existing distribution of Linux and features the latest Linux kernel and Docker technologies for enabling warehouse-scale computing with minimum effort as possible.
Great availability, amazing technologies
The product is distributed as a standard ISO image, which can be burned onto a CD disc or written on a USB flash drive in order to boot it from the BIOS of a PC and install the operating system (detailed installation instructions are provided on the project’s homepage).
In addition to the ISO image, which is supported on both 64-bit and 32-bit instruction set architectures, the project can also be booted over network and installed on a local disk via the PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) and iPXE implementations and boot loaders.
Furthermore, it is supported by various cloud providers, including Amazon EC2, GCE, Brightbox and Rackspace, or deployable as a virtual machine on the QEMU, VMware, OpenStack, Eucalyptus and Vagrant virtualization technologies.
Because of its modern internal design, CoreOS uses with up to 50% less RAM (system memory) than any other existing server operating system. In addition, it makes use of the award winning Docker software project to run applications as containers.
Another interesting feature is the active/passive dual-partition scheme, which will make system updates painless and fast, while providing a rollback functionality. Also, it is designed from the ground up to be clustered, even if it runs on a single machine.
Bottom line
Summing up, CoreOS is a great Linux-based operating system for massive server deployments, which can be used by top-notch Internet companies like Twitter, Facebook or Google to run their services at scale with high flexibility.
