8 ms·

CoreOS Linux Is Now Container Linux by CoreOS

112 points by philips 10y ago

Rapzid 10y ago
Ubuntu is container linux for me. I WANT to install stuff on my host; thank you apt. CoreOS produced etcd which is outliving the OS distribution.. Fleet was a thing.. Their update system.. This pivot away from the distro makes sense.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  > Ubuntu is container linux for me. What?!?! I'd put OpenVZ'd RHEL a country mile ahead of Ubuntu, and there are better candidates than that (like CoreOS). What's the idea behind Ubuntu's claim to the brand? > I WANT to install stuff on my host I'm sure you do, but that means you don't want "container linux". It means you want Linux with containers.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - pawadu 10y ago
    Maybe he wants his container to be as close as possible to his development machine?
    - ownagefool 10y ago
      Actually he just wants to install things on the host, which flys in the face of containerise all the things. YMMV but I think coreos has a good base to support the latter.
    - cbsmith 10y ago
      Easiest way to accomplish that is to run your dev inside containers... Then it's exactly the same. ;-)
      - dschep 10y ago
        I suspect many already do that. From experience, it's still easier to develop on and deploy to the same container host OS. Ie: Docker on Ubuntu for both is best. You'd be hard pressed to do development on CoreOS/Container Linux.
        moondev 10y ago
        Why would that matter? A container is a container
- colemickens 10y ago
  CoreOS is still very much a thing. The update system is seamless and has never once caused a hiccup for me. And I certainly don't perceive this as a pivot away from the distro, at all. Not sure where any of your statements come from. Except the Fleet bit, maybe, but that's just because they saw something better in Kubernetes and now contribute heavily to it. And I'm curious what you want to install on your host if you're using containers. Surely you're not logging into these VMs interactively? (A bit funny too, Ubuntu's fork of docker in Xenial was causing a reboot of basically everything under systemd (including ssh) under certain conditions used in Kubernetes.)
  - eikenberry 10y ago
    Where is the statement that they are moving away from fleet? There was no mention of anything related to that in the linked article.
    - colemickens 10y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean that. My perception is that I see far less announcements about Fleet, but I don't know any official stance or anything. Didn't expect it to have as much activity as it does on GitHub, but the most frequent recent committer doesn't seem to be an employee (again, that doesn't necessarily mean anything). I was mostly agreeing that I don't see Fleet as a super popular tool these days (contrary to features they've contributed to Kubernetes or the ecosystem, etcd, coreos, flannel, etc)
      - philips 10y ago
        This is roughly correct. The README says it best: https://github.com/coreos/fleet#current-status https://github.com/coreos/fleet#current-status Also, as you mention there are very compelling reasons that when Kubernetes came on the scene 2 years ago we started contributing heavily instead of trying to compete. We started to say something with fleet and Kubernetes completed our sentence: https://github.com/coreos/fleet/blob/master/Documentation/fleet-k8s-compared.md https://github.com/coreos/fleet/blob/master/Documentation/fl... Overall, we recommend everyone use Kubernetes as the way to orchestrate containers.
chrismorgan 10y ago
I wish the logo didn’t set the C and L in lowercase.
- philips 10y ago
  I can see that. It does make a bit more sense when placed alongside the other wordmarks http://i.imgur.com/4hqbVG4.png http://i.imgur.com/4hqbVG4.png
  - nikolay 10y ago
    I hate the Container Linux logo! Also, why does etcd's doesn't any reddish element?!
hubert123 10y ago
i think the name change makes sense and it's a power move, it basically says: hey if you want to run containers on linx, we are -the- software to do it instead of just one among many. this only works if you're already fairly established and I think CoreOS has some justification to do it
otterley 10y ago
That name sounds descriptive, which could be a problem with respect to trademark protection. (Descriptive names are more difficult to protect.) I'm frankly surprised the lawyers signed off on it.
- pawadu 10y ago
  "The Linux Foundation protects the public and Linux users from unauthorized and confusing uses of the trademark and authorizes proper uses of the mark through an accessible sublicensing program. The Linux Foundation offers a free, perpetual, world-wide sublicense to approved sublicense applicants. In return, the sublicensee holders must agree not to challenge Linus Torvalds' ownership of the Linux mark in any jurisdiction, and to provide proper attribution of ownership on their goods, services and elsewhere. The Linux Sublicense Agreement is available for review." https://www.linuxmark.org/ https://www.linuxmark.org/
  - dchest 10y ago
    The parent meant that they could protect CoreOS (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:a60d9j.4.2 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:a60...), but might not be able to acquire trademark for Container Linux, because "container" is a descriptive term. Like, you can protect "Colgate", but not "White tooth paste". Pretty sure, though, they know what they were doing and consulted lawyers :)
    - jgillich 10y ago
      Linux is a trademark, toothpaste is not, that's the difference. You could definitely trademark "Black Colgate", "Ubuntu Linux" and "container linux", the latter two via the Linux sublicensing program the comment above yours linked to. IANAL.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        The sublicense agreement just means you get to use Linux in your name. It doesn't mean you get to protect your new name with your own trademark. That's up to the law.
amouat 10y ago
Does the logo remind anyone else of Pacman?
zilkoopsie 10y ago
This name is conversationally awful. Previously one could trivially identify CoreOS as a linux distro to someone. Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? you use containers and linux? There's absolutely nothing distinctly identifying in the new name, nothing distinguishing it from other words expected in the relevant topic of conversation. And pointing out that keeping its name all lower-case is to be consistent with the rest of CoreOS projects is a bit weak when clearly everything else has a succinct and short identifying name then this black sheep ambiguous mouthful of "container linux" shows up. Come on guys! And what is up with this new logo, what does it even attempt to represent? Clearly Tectonic is the new shiny and this didn't receive much thought or investment.
- josteink 10y ago
  > Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? you use containers and linux? On the bright side, Docker has been trying to "own" the term container for quite a while, all to the point that people don't even know that other kinds of containers even exist. This might open up people to the idea that a container is a concept, and that there are multiple implementations out there, and not just Docker.
  - Gusbenz 10y ago
    I've honestly only thought of containers as related to Docker. They definitely appear to be pushing to "own" the term as you said. Anyway, yeah, really bad name. CoreOS was a wonderful distro name that hinted at its overall purpose/function.
- hashkb 10y ago
  Also makes the name of the company suddenly meaningless in a kind of silly way.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  > Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? It is confusing. "We should use Container Linux." "No, you mean lxc, it's used for containers on linux." ... :(
vonklaus 10y ago
There logo and brand is great. It was one of the logos/brands I used yesterday for a gig I had designing a logo for a VR startup-- and CoreOS was my favorite. It was minimal & likely unique enough for trademark and clean. I like it. This is a terribly verbose pivot and pretty bad as far as rebrands go.
raesene6 10y ago
I'm guessing they're shooting for a name assocation thing here, the same thing that Microsoft pulled off with SQL Server associating the generic term with a specific product. However as others have said, searchability for that product name is awful and I'm not sure they're not a little late in the game to try this trick. Googling container linux at the moment and they're not even on the first page of results... I've had a look at CoreOS in the past and it's interesting but very geared towards cloud/large deployments (e.g. by default there is no way to use a password to login after intallation, you need to use automation and setup an SSH key), makes it kind of hard to tinker with in a desktop env. though.
- robryk 10y ago
  I do not have an opinion on whether CoreOS is geared towards large deployments. However, I very strongly disagree with the example you give. Every person who does Ops work has an SSH key. Creating one and keeping it on your laptop/desktop is not hard. Not allowing any remote password-based authentication is very helpful for security _of non-large deployments_ too (or even more helpful for them).
  - raesene6 10y ago
    I didn't say I thought key based logins were bad, but that not allowing a password login during setup made it more awkward for people trying out CoreOS to test. That said I wouldn't say that SSH key based login were necessarily great for large deployments, one lost key+passphrase ('cause everyone totally always has a good passphrase on their SSH keys right) and an org. can be in for a world of pain, as in many cases the procedures for key management of SSH aren't well formalized.
    - robryk 10y ago
      > I didn't say I thought key based logins were bad, but that not allowing a password login during setup made it more awkward for people trying out CoreOS to test. Especially if it's awkward, it's good to force this immediately. Thus "test deployments" will not evolve into real ones while keeping the possibility of password-based authentication. You can also argue that disallowing empty password for remote access makes things more awkward (which is true). Yet, I expect that you are very happy with systems that do so. > That said I wouldn't say that SSH key based login were necessarily great for large deployments, one lost key+passphrase ('cause everyone totally always has a good passphrase on their SSH keys right) and an org. can be in for a world of pain, as in many cases the procedures for key management of SSH aren't well formalized. You are arguing that the situation is bad with keys, while ignoring the fact that the situation is much worse with passwords (seatbelts are annoying and people still die in accidents; yet, they're useful): If you allow passwords, the situation is the same, except you don't have to lose the key too. Also, password reuse between different systems in the same deployment is usually rampant, which makes it very easy for an attacker to jump between such systems (just wait until someone logs in remotely to a compromised system and you have the password). If the situation with keys is bad enough for you, then you can use SSH certificates, which require you to just protect the CA (It is, unless you need revocations, very simple to set up. You can get by without revocations by having an automated CA that gives you certs with a validity of something like an hour.)
fucking_tragedy 10y ago
In 3 - 5 years, the name will sound archaic.
corbet 10y ago
I was going to read the site to see what they are up to, but, grumpy old man that I am, I no longer feel the need to push through sites done in low-contrast text. If they don't want it to be readable, I won't read it...
- sciurus 10y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. I see black text on a white background. http://imgur.com/BDXuFXj http://imgur.com/BDXuFXj
  - brainfire 10y ago
    That's grey on a white background. This is what it would look like if it was black (I removed the "color: rgba(0,0,0,75)" tag via chrome's inspector): http://i.imgur.com/v491foi.png http://i.imgur.com/v491foi.png It looks like your rendering (resolution, dpi, hinting? no idea) mitigates the effects of the reduced contrast in a way that mine do not. I'm guessing that's true on their developers' systems as well.
- philips 10y ago
  Jonathan- if you are seeing grey that is not the intended rendering. I will email you to get some details but it should be pure black on pure white: http://i.imgur.com/e1StBlC.png http://i.imgur.com/e1StBlC.png
politician 10y ago
Ok, the sky is not falling. "CoreOS Tectonic" is their googleable paid enterprise OS product, and now "container linux by CoreOS" is the free offering. The move is clearly designed to push their free offering lower in the search rankings.

112 points by philips 10y ago

Ubuntu is container linux for me. I WANT to install stuff on my host; thank you apt. CoreOS produced etcd which is outliving the OS distribution.. Fleet was a thing.. Their update system.. This pivot away from the distro makes sense.

cbsmith 10y ago
> Ubuntu is container linux for me. What?!?! I'd put OpenVZ'd RHEL a country mile ahead of Ubuntu, and there are better candidates than that (like CoreOS). What's the idea behind Ubuntu's claim to the brand? > I WANT to install stuff on my host I'm sure you do, but that means you don't want "container linux". It means you want Linux with containers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pawadu 10y ago
  Maybe he wants his container to be as close as possible to his development machine?
  - ownagefool 10y ago
    Actually he just wants to install things on the host, which flys in the face of containerise all the things. YMMV but I think coreos has a good base to support the latter.
  - cbsmith 10y ago
    Easiest way to accomplish that is to run your dev inside containers... Then it's exactly the same. ;-)
    - dschep 10y ago
      I suspect many already do that. From experience, it's still easier to develop on and deploy to the same container host OS. Ie: Docker on Ubuntu for both is best. You'd be hard pressed to do development on CoreOS/Container Linux.
      - moondev 10y ago
        Why would that matter? A container is a container
colemickens 10y ago
CoreOS is still very much a thing. The update system is seamless and has never once caused a hiccup for me. And I certainly don't perceive this as a pivot away from the distro, at all. Not sure where any of your statements come from. Except the Fleet bit, maybe, but that's just because they saw something better in Kubernetes and now contribute heavily to it. And I'm curious what you want to install on your host if you're using containers. Surely you're not logging into these VMs interactively? (A bit funny too, Ubuntu's fork of docker in Xenial was causing a reboot of basically everything under systemd (including ssh) under certain conditions used in Kubernetes.)
- eikenberry 10y ago
  Where is the statement that they are moving away from fleet? There was no mention of anything related to that in the linked article.
  - colemickens 10y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean that. My perception is that I see far less announcements about Fleet, but I don't know any official stance or anything. Didn't expect it to have as much activity as it does on GitHub, but the most frequent recent committer doesn't seem to be an employee (again, that doesn't necessarily mean anything). I was mostly agreeing that I don't see Fleet as a super popular tool these days (contrary to features they've contributed to Kubernetes or the ecosystem, etcd, coreos, flannel, etc)
    - philips 10y ago
      This is roughly correct. The README says it best: https://github.com/coreos/fleet#current-status https://github.com/coreos/fleet#current-status Also, as you mention there are very compelling reasons that when Kubernetes came on the scene 2 years ago we started contributing heavily instead of trying to compete. We started to say something with fleet and Kubernetes completed our sentence: https://github.com/coreos/fleet/blob/master/Documentation/fleet-k8s-compared.md https://github.com/coreos/fleet/blob/master/Documentation/fl... Overall, we recommend everyone use Kubernetes as the way to orchestrate containers.

chrismorgan 10y ago

I wish the logo didn’t set the C and L in lowercase.

philips 10y ago
I can see that. It does make a bit more sense when placed alongside the other wordmarks http://i.imgur.com/4hqbVG4.png http://i.imgur.com/4hqbVG4.png
- nikolay 10y ago
  I hate the Container Linux logo! Also, why does etcd's doesn't any reddish element?!

hubert123 10y ago

i think the name change makes sense and it's a power move, it basically says: hey if you want to run containers on linx, we are -the- software to do it instead of just one among many. this only works if you're already fairly established and I think CoreOS has some justification to do it

otterley 10y ago

That name sounds descriptive, which could be a problem with respect to trademark protection. (Descriptive names are more difficult to protect.) I'm frankly surprised the lawyers signed off on it.

pawadu 10y ago
"The Linux Foundation protects the public and Linux users from unauthorized and confusing uses of the trademark and authorizes proper uses of the mark through an accessible sublicensing program. The Linux Foundation offers a free, perpetual, world-wide sublicense to approved sublicense applicants. In return, the sublicensee holders must agree not to challenge Linus Torvalds' ownership of the Linux mark in any jurisdiction, and to provide proper attribution of ownership on their goods, services and elsewhere. The Linux Sublicense Agreement is available for review." https://www.linuxmark.org/ https://www.linuxmark.org/
- dchest 10y ago
  The parent meant that they could protect CoreOS (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:a60d9j.4.2 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:a60...), but might not be able to acquire trademark for Container Linux, because "container" is a descriptive term. Like, you can protect "Colgate", but not "White tooth paste". Pretty sure, though, they know what they were doing and consulted lawyers :)
  - jgillich 10y ago
    Linux is a trademark, toothpaste is not, that's the difference. You could definitely trademark "Black Colgate", "Ubuntu Linux" and "container linux", the latter two via the Linux sublicensing program the comment above yours linked to. IANAL.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      The sublicense agreement just means you get to use Linux in your name. It doesn't mean you get to protect your new name with your own trademark. That's up to the law.

amouat 10y ago

Does the logo remind anyone else of Pacman?

zilkoopsie 10y ago

This name is conversationally awful. Previously one could trivially identify CoreOS as a linux distro to someone. Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? you use containers and linux? There's absolutely nothing distinctly identifying in the new name, nothing distinguishing it from other words expected in the relevant topic of conversation. And pointing out that keeping its name all lower-case is to be consistent with the rest of CoreOS projects is a bit weak when clearly everything else has a succinct and short identifying name then this black sheep ambiguous mouthful of "container linux" shows up. Come on guys! And what is up with this new logo, what does it even attempt to represent? Clearly Tectonic is the new shiny and this didn't receive much thought or investment.

josteink 10y ago
> Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? you use containers and linux? On the bright side, Docker has been trying to "own" the term container for quite a while, all to the point that people don't even know that other kinds of containers even exist. This might open up people to the idea that a container is a concept, and that there are multiple implementations out there, and not just Docker.
- Gusbenz 10y ago
  I've honestly only thought of containers as related to Docker. They definitely appear to be pushing to "own" the term as you said. Anyway, yeah, really bad name. CoreOS was a wonderful distro name that hinted at its overall purpose/function.
hashkb 10y ago
Also makes the name of the company suddenly meaningless in a kind of silly way.
wyldfire 10y ago
> Now what are they supposed to say? container linux? it sounds like someone misspoke, what is it you're saying? It is confusing. "We should use Container Linux." "No, you mean lxc, it's used for containers on linux." ... :(

vonklaus 10y ago

There logo and brand is great. It was one of the logos/brands I used yesterday for a gig I had designing a logo for a VR startup-- and CoreOS was my favorite. It was minimal & likely unique enough for trademark and clean. I like it. This is a terribly verbose pivot and pretty bad as far as rebrands go.

raesene6 10y ago

I'm guessing they're shooting for a name assocation thing here, the same thing that Microsoft pulled off with SQL Server associating the generic term with a specific product. However as others have said, searchability for that product name is awful and I'm not sure they're not a little late in the game to try this trick. Googling container linux at the moment and they're not even on the first page of results... I've had a look at CoreOS in the past and it's interesting but very geared towards cloud/large deployments (e.g. by default there is no way to use a password to login after intallation, you need to use automation and setup an SSH key), makes it kind of hard to tinker with in a desktop env. though.

robryk 10y ago
I do not have an opinion on whether CoreOS is geared towards large deployments. However, I very strongly disagree with the example you give. Every person who does Ops work has an SSH key. Creating one and keeping it on your laptop/desktop is not hard. Not allowing any remote password-based authentication is very helpful for security _of non-large deployments_ too (or even more helpful for them).
- raesene6 10y ago
  I didn't say I thought key based logins were bad, but that not allowing a password login during setup made it more awkward for people trying out CoreOS to test. That said I wouldn't say that SSH key based login were necessarily great for large deployments, one lost key+passphrase ('cause everyone totally always has a good passphrase on their SSH keys right) and an org. can be in for a world of pain, as in many cases the procedures for key management of SSH aren't well formalized.
  - robryk 10y ago
    > I didn't say I thought key based logins were bad, but that not allowing a password login during setup made it more awkward for people trying out CoreOS to test. Especially if it's awkward, it's good to force this immediately. Thus "test deployments" will not evolve into real ones while keeping the possibility of password-based authentication. You can also argue that disallowing empty password for remote access makes things more awkward (which is true). Yet, I expect that you are very happy with systems that do so. > That said I wouldn't say that SSH key based login were necessarily great for large deployments, one lost key+passphrase ('cause everyone totally always has a good passphrase on their SSH keys right) and an org. can be in for a world of pain, as in many cases the procedures for key management of SSH aren't well formalized. You are arguing that the situation is bad with keys, while ignoring the fact that the situation is much worse with passwords (seatbelts are annoying and people still die in accidents; yet, they're useful): If you allow passwords, the situation is the same, except you don't have to lose the key too. Also, password reuse between different systems in the same deployment is usually rampant, which makes it very easy for an attacker to jump between such systems (just wait until someone logs in remotely to a compromised system and you have the password). If the situation with keys is bad enough for you, then you can use SSH certificates, which require you to just protect the CA (It is, unless you need revocations, very simple to set up. You can get by without revocations by having an automated CA that gives you certs with a validity of something like an hour.)

fucking_tragedy 10y ago

In 3 - 5 years, the name will sound archaic.

corbet 10y ago

I was going to read the site to see what they are up to, but, grumpy old man that I am, I no longer feel the need to push through sites done in low-contrast text. If they don't want it to be readable, I won't read it...

sciurus 10y ago
I'm not sure what you mean. I see black text on a white background. http://imgur.com/BDXuFXj http://imgur.com/BDXuFXj
- brainfire 10y ago
  That's grey on a white background. This is what it would look like if it was black (I removed the "color: rgba(0,0,0,75)" tag via chrome's inspector): http://i.imgur.com/v491foi.png http://i.imgur.com/v491foi.png It looks like your rendering (resolution, dpi, hinting? no idea) mitigates the effects of the reduced contrast in a way that mine do not. I'm guessing that's true on their developers' systems as well.
philips 10y ago
Jonathan- if you are seeing grey that is not the intended rendering. I will email you to get some details but it should be pure black on pure white: http://i.imgur.com/e1StBlC.png http://i.imgur.com/e1StBlC.png

politician 10y ago

Ok, the sky is not falling. "CoreOS Tectonic" is their googleable paid enterprise OS product, and now "container linux by CoreOS" is the free offering. The move is clearly designed to push their free offering lower in the search rankings.