In a recent post, The New Minimalist Operating Systems, I briefly described three new OSs designed with Docker in mind. I also mentioned Boot2Docker, which I considered to be the smallest (23MB) Docker-focused OS at the time. Less than two weeks later, a new tiny Docker OS has arrived: RancherOS. If you are interested in what makes these two very minimal OSs tick, read on.
Part of my work on the Technical Alliances team at Docker involves exploring innovative projects our ecosystem partners are working on. One area that has seen radical change in recent years is the operating system (OS). You may have noticed some new OS releases: CoreOS (August 2013), Project Atomic (April 2014), and more recently Snappy Ubuntu Core (December 2014). These are all minimalist OSs designed to host Docker applications and simplify your infrastructure. If you are interested in the distinguishing features of each and how they differ from traditional Linux distributions, read on.