LinuxKit is a toolkit for building secure, portable, and lean container-based operating systems. It builds the entire OS using containers, with all OS services contained within pluggable containers. The OS is built declaratively using Moby tools and a YAML configuration file to specify components like the kernel, initialization services, long-running processes, files to copy, and trusted components. This approach creates immutable, cryptographically verified OS images with minimal components and privileges for improved security and reliability.

1. Anshul Patel

2. What is LinuxKit
● Toolkit for building secure, portable & lean operating system for containers.
● Built with containers, for running containers.
● All Operating system services are containers.
● Operating system services are pluggable.
● Operating system is built using Moby tool.

3. Purpose of LinuxKit
● Creates Immutable Operating Systems.
● Provides Declarative way for creating Operating Systems.
● Build the whole system in CI pipeline which guarantees reproducible builds &
reliability.
● Suitable for Cloud, VMs and Bare-Metals.

4. LinuxKit YAML config file
● Kernel - Specifies Kernel Image version and parameters
● Init - Components which will be part of initrd
● Onboot - One-off containers executed during boot. They get terminated after
execution
● Services - Long running process which will serve the incoming requests.
● Files - Copy local files to Operating System
● Trust - Components which are required to be cryptographically verified with
Docker Content Trust.

5. Example

6. Security
● Include only components which are required.
● Provides Ability to use latest Kernel.
● Containerized Operating System services, hence minimal privileges.
● Smaller attack surface.
● Immutable Infrastructure, only namespaced container data and stateful
partitions can be modified.

7. Support
Best Supported
● Hyperkit, VMware(Pro), Qemu/KVM
● GCE, Packet.net
In Progress
● AWS, Azure, Windows, BlueMix
Planned
● ARM

8. Demo

9. Ongoing/Future Developments
● Rewrite in type safe languages such as Rust.
● Blueprints/Samples for different platforms.
● Improve APIs.
● Integration with Infrakit to run cluster of instances running Kubernetes/Swarm.
● Integration with other orchestration tools like VMware VCloud Director,
Terraform.

10. Questions?
Thank You!