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LXD is now under Canonical
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoThe likely reason behind this, given today’s news, is https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/ https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/
- n3storm 3y agoThis is great
- zuhsetaqi 3y agoWhy do you think this is great?
- rendx 3y ago"the team behind Linux Containers regrets that decision"
- veidr 3y agoWoah I notice that the signatures on that include Stéphane Graber. It's rather hard to imagine LXD continuing as a going concern without him. Does this mean he regrets the decision, but is going to keep working on LXD, or... does this mean LXD is fucked? -- concerned LXD user
- re-thc 3y ago> does this mean LXD is fucked It is either way. Docker / kubernetes is eating it up. There aren't as many LXD users as they'd hope. Oh and he does work for Canonical.
- softirq 3y agoThe point of them owning LXD is to give them total control of the underlying technology they are using for Snaps. Snaps is the play… has nothing to do with kube/docker. It’s actually more of a synonym of ostree and flatpaks.
- psanford 3y agoSnap is not built on top of lxd.
- rascul 3y agoCould it be?
- type0 3y agoShould it be?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- justinclift 3y agoSounds like it might go that way though.
- rcxdude 3y agowhich is a shame, because it works a lot better if you just want lightweight VMs without 5 billion layers of stuff crammed on top.
- psanford 3y agoLXD is really great software. The majority of the contributions already come from canonical, so I doubt this will make much difference in the trajectory of the project. I will say that I prefer running LXD on NixOS hosts where it isn't packaged as a snap. Hopefully canonical doesn't somehow break that.
- v3ss0n 3y agoArch have it packaged as nonsnap too
- jamesponddotco 3y agoAnd openSUSE.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago> I will say that I prefer running LXD on NixOS hosts where it isn't packaged as a snap. Hopefully canonical doesn't somehow break that. Same, though it seems this acquisition is mainly about snaps, so we'll see. I wish Nix would package Kata, a hybrid of containers and VMs. I would migrate to that from LXD. https://katacontainers.io/ https://katacontainers.io/ It does have Firecracker and Ignite though, which I haven't tested but probably also suffice. https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite
- micahcc 3y agoWhy LXD over podman? I've found podman to be a pretty great docker lite.
- goku12 3y agoLXD isn't an alternative to podman. Podman is meant to run 'application containers', where each container has just one running process. LXD is meant to run 'system containers' where each container is a full Linux distribution with an init system and (possibly) multiple daemons. LXD containers are like light-weight VMs. Unlike VMs, LXD containers share the host kernel. You could run podman or other OCI containers inside LXD. I use LXD to test multi node K8s (K3s) on my desktop system.
- totallywrong 3y agoStéphane Graber's work is fantastic and LXD had a lot of potential. But Canonical managed to drive me away from it with that abomination called Snap and its auto updates that could bring down a cluster without warning.
- kwk1 3y agoThankfully, the latest release of Debian provides LXD via .deb packages.
- tecleandor 3y agoReally? That's great, finally I can get rid of snaps on my personal web hosting. I'll be testing it next week.
- likebike 3y agoYeah, snaps can go to hell. In addition to what you already mentioned, they are extremely complicated to debug when things go wrong.
- Animats 3y agoThe left column of my Ubuntu machine is filling up with useless directory icons from pseudo file systems that contain Canonical's "snaps".
- medellin 3y agoMoved completely off ubuntu after snaps were introduced. Sticking with gentoo now because it’s one of a few distros that doesn’t try to control what software you have to use.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoMe too. Turns out alpine is better for server vms for my use case and cachyos is better for desktop for my use case as wrll (at least possibly until i figure out nixos)
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoVery soon Microsoft will acquire Canonical for at least $40 billion. The reasons: * Ubuntu powers the overwhelming majority of Azure workloads (both customer and internal) * Nearly all Linux applications and tooling target Ubuntu first (or at the very least) * Github, VSCode. The missing piece is the actual runtime operating system. Ubuntu. * Canonical employs nearly all the remaining core enterprise open-source developers after IBM acquired Red Hat Start the countdown to Microsoft Ubuntu.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoUnless Microsoft has an Activision-sized amount of cash burning a hole in its pocket, that feels unlikely. Seems far easier/likelier to make a Microsoft branded Debian than to go all-in-on Ubuntu. Maybe I could take the aqui-hire angle, but how many Ubuntu devs would want to stay with Microsoft?
- totallywrong 3y ago> Unless Microsoft has an Activision-sized amount of cash burning a hole in its pocket What? You greatly overestimate Canonical. Buying it would be a rounding error in Microsoft's balance sheet.
- ewoodrich 3y agoThe parent comment stated the 40 billion figure (joking or not).
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoIt feels like once M&A has decided to buy a company, that money is going to be spent. If Microsoft is prevented from purchasing Activision, I expect a foolishly profligate spending spree to follow.
- midoridensha 3y ago>Maybe I could take the aqui-hire angle, but how many Ubuntu devs would want to stay with Microsoft? Probably far more devs than they'd get trying to make their own MS-branded Debian from scratch. Even if a bunch of them left after a while, they'd have competent, experienced people working for them for that time, instead of trying to staff up from zero and having a lot time where there aren't enough people to really get much done, and during that time they can hire new people who aren't going to quit just because it's MS.
- samtho 3y agoI never hopped onto the LXD train because when I needed it years and years ago, it wasn’t quite ready for my use-case so I built my what I needed around LXC itself and it’s worked great. I wonder how LXC will evolve and if another product will arise from this? It seems like the Linux Containers organization is staying separate with LXC.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Canonical, the creator and main contributor of the LXD project has decided that after over 8 years as part of the Linux Containers community, the project would now be better served directly under Canonical’s own set of projects. > While the team behind Linux Containers regrets that decision and will be missing LXD as one of its projects, it does respect Canonical’s decision and is now in the process of moving the project over. I'm curious how that works; if the owner isn't happy about transferring the project, why go along with it? What leverage or right does Canonical have?
- pests 3y agoLinux Containers was always just an unbrella project which included LXD. Canonical was the creator and primary developer of LXD since its inception.
- ropyeett 3y agoLXD is a trademark of Canonical https://ubuntu.com/legal/trademarks https://ubuntu.com/legal/trademarks
- zekrioca 3y ago$
- solarkraft 3y agoAFAIK, Canonical funds most of the development and has always been leading it.
- bregma 3y agoWhen your employer and the owner of the intellectual property you are employed to work on decide to move that intellectual property to a different server, you either acquiesce or you look for another job doing something else. You have to ask yourself if it's the hill you're willing to die on, and only a few are privileged enough to choose a life of full-time leisure.
- zacksiri 3y agoI've been a long time user of LXD, it's an amazing project. It basically served as an alternative to kubernetes / docker for me. Enabled me to launch projects and build companies without being bogged down by the complexity of kubernetes. I've created a project called instellar https://instellar.app https://instellar.app which uses LXD under the hood. I'm working towards open sourcing instellar. It basically automates continuous deployment pipeline and automatically manages your infrastructure. Basically you get a heroku in a box. I see a lot of people complaining about snap here. In the initial days yes, snap's auto upgrade would bring down a cluster, however I believe they've resolved this issue. Currently from my experience things are really smooth between upgrades. Basically invisible to me. Hope this change brings LXD forward, and while the team may "regret the decision" I do hope they continue to work on LXD.
- rpcope1 3y agoKind of sucks to see LXD get pulled from Linux Containers. Stéphane's (and the rest of the Linux Containers team) work has been incredible, and honestly it gets slept on way too much. LXC containers have been incredibly powerful and useful for me, though I never bothered to learn LXD. I have this bizzare intuition that Canonical is watching Red Hat, and that there's a non-zero possibility of them aping the whole pay a subscription to get the source and distro thing Red Hat is currently engaging in.
- hospitalJail 3y agoIt was like 15 years ago, but I though Canonical threw some red flags when they had that terrible ubuntu GUI update to have a ribbon. Completely unnecessary, 100% visual, and made everything worse. I bailed from them shortly after that, even with the option to use other GUIs. As Linux desktop has matured, it hasnt been necessary to go back to Ubuntu. I imagine most of Canonical's power comes from users who don't try new things, or corporations who are too big to change anything.
- lproven 3y ago> that terrible ubuntu GUI update to have a ribbon. Which one was that? No version of Ubuntu I've ever seen has ribbons. This is one of the reasons I like it. Do you mean when they switched from Unity to GNOME?
- hospitalJail 3y agoYeah that sounds right. I can't quite remember the details because it has been 15 years and I loved trying different distros in general. I wasn't tied to the Ubuntu platform. I suppose if I'm tied to anything, its the Debian branch of distros.
- galkk 3y agoAs I suspect that op meant that left sidebar that Ubuntu actually introduced with Unity. It was definitely ugly and unnecessary, especially with Amazon button on it by default (if I recall correctly).
- botanical 3y agoUbuntu is already the major contributor to LXD. What's peoples aversion to snaps in the thread? For me it makes for a stable system that allows me to run the latest version of apps in a confined space, it's actually perfect
- capableweb 3y agoAFAIK, snaps don't have a (official) way of disabling auto updates which means everything run a snap might update at any time, rather than when the best time is. This might work fine for a personal computer you use for Facetime or whatever, but in a professional environment or for servers, you can't just let software update when it thinks it time to do it, you need to figure out a good opportunity for it to happen.
- w1ntermut3 3y agoYes they do: https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--hold https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--...
- capableweb 3y agoAh, supported in 2.58+ which is the latest stable version, seems I'm up to date when it comes to my snap knowledge. Happy that it finally is supported, but not super happy about it taking ~7 years to get in place...
- aborsy 3y agoYeah, I don’t understand the hate in HN. Both snap and LXD are good container technologies. Snap is better than flatpak in several ways, for example, system programs could be confined too.
- severino 3y ago> What's peoples aversion to snaps in the thread? In my case, because it's being forced and replacing applications that worked out of the box with applications with issues. Firefox, for example. After it became a snap, you'll see a message telling you to close Firefox so it could update itself (?) but simply closing it is not enough and, last time I checked, it looked like you had to run some command line to solve it. Also, due to its sandboxing, external hardware like smart card readers didn't work in the snap version, so I couldn't log into e-government websites anymore. I ended up installing the tarball version...
- andrei821 3y agoI hear a lot of people complaining about Snap. While I am not a Ubuntu user for 15+ years, I am curious why Canonical is pushing Snaps so much. There must be positive feedback from their target market. Maybe the traditional Linux desktop user does not fit anymore into Canonical’s persona
- thecosmicfrog 3y agoMy understanding is that IoT devices are a big reason for Snap's existence.
- zokier 3y agoCanonical wants some corner of the ecosystem where they can say that they are driving the progress instead of being just downstream consumers and (re-)packagers. And to be honest, Snaps had fair chance of succeeding; when they first were released flatpak was still pretty young. Docker has had its own issues, and podman (etc) is even younger yet. If they played their cards right Snap could have been Canonicals chance to shine, and I guess they know it and are still trying to salvage the effort.
- znpy 3y agoDoes that mean that lxd is dead?
- yrro 3y agoI really liked lxc but then one day it turned out that it was replaced by lxd and you had to install Ubuntu to use it and I switched to docker (now on podman).
- leetnewb 3y agolxc was not replaced by lxd. they are separate projects, neither of which require ubuntu.
- npteljes 3y agoDo you really have to use Ubuntu for LXC? My (Debian-based) Proxmox has LXC capability, and it's easy to find instructions to other Linuxes, like so: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LXC https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LXC. Is there something I'm missing?
- stephenr 3y agoI think they're referring to the Linux Containers project focussing more heavily on LXD and pushing it as a better "front end" to LXC - but LXD has not been available directly on Debian until Bookworm was released .. a month ago.
- NorwegianDude 3y agoLXD is awesome. Let package managers handle updates, automatic security updates, high performance compared to docker/kubernetes and the opportunity to run the same thing outside a container if that's needed.
- kramerger 3y agoNot surprising as the LXD team was the only part of Linux containers community that actually achieved something. Stéphane Graber presented a exciting new functionality every month or so on his YT channel. With that said, LXD currently builds from source and can install on Debian without needing snap. Canonical's VM counterpart "multipass" while on github cannot (easily) be built from source code and requires snap to install. I very much hope LXD does not go that route.
- mmrezaie 3y agoWe use canonical tech in 3000 nodes in 4 different data centers. I would be afraid if LXD is going to be locked with juju for orchestration. Juju is not something the industry has been using and it is the source of most our problems e.g. performance overhead, scalability issues and juju not being mixable with other orchestration tools. I wish LXD team try to keep it open and stop entangling lxd with the rest of canonical tools. We do not deploy lxd on scale using snap. We build it and have as part of our packer pipeline on rockylinux 8.
- hendersoon 3y agoLXD is fantastic software, makes spinning up VM-like containers extremely easy. I used it for several years before moving to proxmox for a more mature manageable solution. Agree it would be vastly more popular and interesting if it didn't require snap.
- omniglottal 3y agoCanonical could really have really swept up a lot of former Red Hat developers if they'd simply redact and undo the whole Snap fiasco. For a user-respecting OS, people have few options other than Arch (for quick security updates) or Debian (for LTS) anymore... I used to think Canonical's tradeoffs were acceptable, but corporate control tends too much to try and declare their position disingenuously via marketting ploys instead of merit. Snaps "solve" centralized automation but are also the cause of lost trust by making it under their control. Between automation and trust, I would rather they just solved the trust part by trusting the user (by default) to own/control all the automation. Engineers know better what's actually at stake... it's a shame because this white-knuckle corporate greed is precisely what keeps me from advising anyone to trust this OS - they could have gotten so much growth and profit if they cared more about their real users than they do about their user's management. Instead, people swarm away, telling everybody why (hint: "snaps"), and Mr. Shuttleworth just watches while users drain away, looking for a vendor they can trust and finding, today, none.
- solarkraft 3y agoI'm not aware of an official way to use it without Snap, so effectively it's already completely fully coupled to Ubuntu to me.