Daily Post July 30 2025
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Incus
This is an image-based platform that allows users to deploy and manage both containers and virtual machines through a unified interface. It supports images for a range of Linux distributions, providing flexibility. Incus leverages technologies like LXC for system containers and QEMU for virtual machines, giving users a “cloud-like” experience on their own hardware. This means businesses and developers can set up isolated environments to run applications, full operating systems, or specialized workloads, all managed through an intuitive command-line tool or REST API.
It has the ability to manage both system and application containers alongside virtual machines, with straightforward configuration and operational consistency. System containers with Incus provide lightweight virtualization by sharing the host kernel but offering a complete OS environment. Application containers are more akin to Docker, running isolated processes with minimal overhead. Virtual machines, on the other hand, are fully emulated environments capable of running different operating systems or highly customized Linux distributions. This breadth enables Incus to solve a variety of infrastructure challenges within a single framework
Why Use Incus?
For individual use, Incus can turn a laptop into a development platform that cleanly separates dependencies for different projects. In enterprise or production environments, its scalability allows deployment of clusters capable of managing thousands of workloads.
The security model of Incus is strong by design. Unprivileged containers, granular resource restrictions, and network controls mitigate attack surfaces while giving administrators fine-tuned command over their instances.
Automation and backup features, including snapshots and migration tools, contribute to operational resilience and disaster recovery.
It leverages an event-driven API giving logging, operational hooks, and lifecycle management which simplifies system integration with monitoring and orchestration platforms. This makes it an good choice for businesses embracing DevOps or Infrastructure-as-Code philosophies.
Another benefit is project compartmentalization. Businesses can create projects within Incus, isolating different workloads, environments, or clients. This ensures only necessary features and data are available to each project, supporting regulatory compliance and multi-tenant scenarios.
The Community
This is open source and licensed under Apache 2.0, providing accessibility and innovation without vendor lock-in. Created as a community-driven alternative to Canonical’s LXD by Aleksa Sarai, Incus is led and maintained by a core group, many of whom contributed to LXD’s success. The open, welcoming nature of the project allows anyone to contribute. There are no contributor license agreements or restrictive contracts, just a simple sign-off process in line with best practices for open-source development.
The community surrounding Incus is solid and engaged. Public forums, thoroughly documented APIs, and regular feature releases keep the project healthy and responsive to the needs of real-world users. Current long-term support (LTS) releases, such as Incus 6.0, are supported for several years, ensuring stability for businesses that require it. Monthly feature releases incorporate new technologies, bug fixes, and performance improvements, leading to an energetic pace of innovation without sacrificing dependability.
Why not use Docker?
Choosing Incus over Docker typically revolves around the differences in what each platform is designed to do and the level of system control and flexibility they provide. Docker is mainly focused on application containers, where each container runs a single application or microservice in isolation, sharing the host OS kernel but with its own filesystem and resources. This application-centric approach is well-suited for developing, shipping, and running distributed applications with minimal overhead. Docker excels in environments where you want to package software and its dependencies into a portable unit, and its ecosystem including Docker Compose and Docker Swarm supports fast development, scaling, and orchestration of such services.
Incus, on the otherhand, is centered around system containers, which provide not just isolated applications but full Linux systems within each container. This means each Incus container can behave like an entire virtual machine, allowing you to run multiple processes, manage services as you would on a standalone server, and even run different distributions side by side. This is valuable when you need environments that are closer to lightweight VMs, for example, testing operating system-level configurations, simulating complex networked environments, or consolidating infrastructure for resource efficiency. Incus also extends beyond containers by offering native virtual machine management, so you can mix and match workloads that require either lightweight containers or fully isolated VMs within a single unified toolset. You can even run Docker itself inside an Incus system container, combining the two approaches depending on your needs.
Another area of difference is in resource management and isolation. Incus provides fine-grained control over resources like CPU and memory, and its system containers achieve strong isolation, giving you more confidence for multi-tenant situations or when dealing with sensitive workloads. Docker, which is primarily managed via APIs and CLIs designed for application lifecycle, Incus is built to be extensible with an API that favors automation, hybrid environments, and orchestration, especially in clustered or high-density deployments. For businesses with a need for full-featured OS environments in containers, or a preference for Infrastructure as Code, Incus gives operational flexibility.
When it comes to clustering and scalability, Incus uses a distributed database model that allows for scaling and high availability, with less administrative overhead compared to traditional clustering solutions. This makes Incus interesting for organizations that want to manage clusters of containers and virtual machines with simplified failover and networking.
The decision between Incus and Docker depends on your use case. If you’re looking for developer-friendly, highly portable application containers with mature tooling and extensive community adoption, Docker is usually the better choice. If your needs are broader both full system environments and VMs, with a strong focus on automation, resource management, and scalable clustering Incus is a alternative, particularly for infrastructure-heavy or multi-tenant environments. For some users, the greatest advantage is being able to run and orchestrate both system containers and VMs from the same interface, allowing for a more flexible infrastructure design.
Something worth looking at: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/