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My team ran about 50% of a Fortune 500 software company on CoreOS up until a few months ago when we migrated to Flatcar. We even paid a lucrative support contra

My team ran about 50% of a Fortune 500 software company on CoreOS up until a few months ago when we migrated to Flatcar. We even paid a lucrative support contract while we ran it. I can count the number of major OS issues we had with it over several years on one hand- and we've had even better success with Flatcar so far. Calling CoreOS unsuccessful is a massive misunderstanding of the market.

gcbw3 6y ago
Your company running on it (and not flatcar, heh) is what shows a massive misunderstanding of the market. Just because people buy snake oil, it doesn't make it a good product.
- dharmab 6y ago
  We've been running CoreOS since before Flatcar _existed_. And we seem to be doing just fine on the OS.
- staticvoidmaine 6y ago
  Let’s keep this chain going: Your viewpoint on this company using it is what shows a massive misunderstanding of the market. Clearly, people are using it successfully and enjoying it (or other similar products). Just because you don’t like it it doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
einpoklum 6y ago
Maybe you're right - it's not unsuccessful after all, it really is a bullshit project... Now _every_ part of the OS is in a container! Wheee! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Linux (for those who don't know, it was renamed from CoreOS to Container Linux)
- dang 6y ago
  Would you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we ban such accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    1. I repeated an argument made in the article itself. That cannot be considered flamebait. 2. I've always expressed strong opinions in my posts. Sometimes this results in multiple upvotes, sometimes in multiple downvotes. 3. About being "unsubstantive" - I underscored the main concept/rationale for Core Linux, and linked to its Wikipedia page. You could argue that it's not substantive _enough_, but when you phrase it this way it's as though you merely dislike the fact that I repeated the inflammatory term from the article.
blixtra 6y ago
Chris from Kinvolk here. Happy to see you're having success with Flatcar. We, of course, agree that CoreOS Container Linux was a huge success. The uptake that we've seen in Flatcar usage, especially since the CoreOS EOL date on May 26th, has been extraordinary. So from what we a can see, the market is there for a minimal Linux for containers and and we're happy to continue filling that need with Flatcar.
- csours 6y ago
  Do you have any resources for understanding OSS/FOSS around minimal Linux distributions for containers?
  - blixtra 6y ago
    I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. But Flatcar Container Linux is completely open source. In fact, everything we do at Kinvolk is. We do not build open-core products. For example, we've gone a step further than CoreOS did and have a fully open-sourced update server, Nebraska (https://github.com/kinvolk/nebraska https://github.com/kinvolk/nebraska). We also generate a list of contents and licenses for each build. Here is an example from the most recent stable: https://stable.release.flatcar-linux.net/amd64-usr/2512.2.1/flatcar_developer_container_licenses.json https://stable.release.flatcar-linux.net/amd64-usr/2512.2.1/...
    - teraku 6y ago
      That sounds really interesting! I currently work on a side-project which is a distributed application and I plan on incorporating kubernetes/cloud-native into some of the core concepts, so I will check it out once I'm at this part of the implementation!

gcbw3 6y ago

Your company running on it (and not flatcar, heh) is what shows a massive misunderstanding of the market. Just because people buy snake oil, it doesn't make it a good product.

dharmab 6y ago
We've been running CoreOS since before Flatcar _existed_. And we seem to be doing just fine on the OS.
staticvoidmaine 6y ago
Let’s keep this chain going: Your viewpoint on this company using it is what shows a massive misunderstanding of the market. Clearly, people are using it successfully and enjoying it (or other similar products). Just because you don’t like it it doesn’t change the reality of the situation.

einpoklum 6y ago

Maybe you're right - it's not unsuccessful after all, it really is a bullshit project... Now _every_ part of the OS is in a container! Wheee! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Linux (for those who don't know, it was renamed from CoreOS to Container Linux)

dang 6y ago
Would you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we ban such accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- einpoklum 6y ago
  1. I repeated an argument made in the article itself. That cannot be considered flamebait. 2. I've always expressed strong opinions in my posts. Sometimes this results in multiple upvotes, sometimes in multiple downvotes. 3. About being "unsubstantive" - I underscored the main concept/rationale for Core Linux, and linked to its Wikipedia page. You could argue that it's not substantive _enough_, but when you phrase it this way it's as though you merely dislike the fact that I repeated the inflammatory term from the article.

blixtra 6y ago

Chris from Kinvolk here. Happy to see you're having success with Flatcar. We, of course, agree that CoreOS Container Linux was a huge success. The uptake that we've seen in Flatcar usage, especially since the CoreOS EOL date on May 26th, has been extraordinary. So from what we a can see, the market is there for a minimal Linux for containers and and we're happy to continue filling that need with Flatcar.

csours 6y ago
Do you have any resources for understanding OSS/FOSS around minimal Linux distributions for containers?
- blixtra 6y ago
  I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. But Flatcar Container Linux is completely open source. In fact, everything we do at Kinvolk is. We do not build open-core products. For example, we've gone a step further than CoreOS did and have a fully open-sourced update server, Nebraska (https://github.com/kinvolk/nebraska https://github.com/kinvolk/nebraska). We also generate a list of contents and licenses for each build. Here is an example from the most recent stable: https://stable.release.flatcar-linux.net/amd64-usr/2512.2.1/flatcar_developer_container_licenses.json https://stable.release.flatcar-linux.net/amd64-usr/2512.2.1/...
  - teraku 6y ago
    That sounds really interesting! I currently work on a side-project which is a distributed application and I plan on incorporating kubernetes/cloud-native into some of the core concepts, so I will check it out once I'm at this part of the implementation!