LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.
LXC containers are often considered as something in the middle between a chroot and a full fledged virtual machine. The goal of LXC is to create an environment as close as possible to a standard Linux installation but without the need for a separate kernel.
LXC is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Kernel namespaces (ipc, uts, mount, pid, network and user).
- Apparmor and SELinux profiles.
- Seccomp policies.
- Chroots (using pivot_root).
- Kernel capabilities.
- CGroups (control groups).
LXC is currently made of a few separate components:
- The liblxc library.
- Several language bindings for the API:
- python3 (in-tree, long term support in 2.0.x).
- lua (in tree, long term support in 2.0.x).
- Go.
- ruby.
- python2.
- Haskell.
- A set of standard tools to control the containers.
- Distribution container templates.
Website: linuxcontainers.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Virtuozzo, IBM, Google, Eric Biederman and contributors
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v.2.1 (some components under GNU General Public License v2 and BSD)
LXC is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Containers | |
|---|---|
| Docker | Create, deploy, and run applications by using containers |
| LXC | Userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features |
| containerd | Industry-standard container runtime |
| Apptainer | Optimized for compute focused enterprise and HPC workloads |
| Kata Containers | Uses a hypervisor to provide isolation when spawning containers |
| OpenVz | Container-based virtualization |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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