Linux on Flatcar Container Linux

Container Linux: Back on Track with Flatcar

Wed, 27 May 2020 08:00:00 -0700

Yesterday, CoreOS Container Linux reached its end of life (EOL). Today marks the beginning of Flatcar Container Linux as an independent Linux distribution. With this comes a certain responsibility, but more notably: an opportunity for Kinvolk and the broader container community.

Just after the EOL announcement this February, Chris wrote a post about what this would mean for Kinvolk and the Flatcar project . Now that the end-of-life has come to pass, I’d like to build on Chris’ post, go further into where we go from here, and the reasons I’m excited to be at Kinvolk.

VMware and Kinvolk bring Flatcar Container Linux to vSphere, providing supported path forward for CoreOS users

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:30:00 +0200

Recently, we have been working with many end users who, faced with the imminent end-of-life of CoreOS Container Linux, are migrating to Flatcar Container Linux as the secure foundation for their container deployments. And, with the majority of enterprises adopting vSphere for their private clouds¹, we have heard from many of those users that fully certified support for vSphere is an important consideration in their migration decision.

Today, we are pleased to share details of our collaboration with VMware to enable the deployment of Flatcar Container Linux in a fully-supported vSphere environment. There are a number of important elements to this:

Steps to Migrate from CoreOS to Flatcar Container Linux

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 17:00:00 +0100

Flatcar Container Linux is a drop-in replacement for CoreOS Container Linux. Thus, one should think that a migration should be an effortless task, and it is.

Since Red Hat announced that CoreOS Container Linux will reach its end-of-life on May 26 , we’ve seen a major uptick in the usage of Flatcar Container Linux. We’ve also had a number of questions about the migration process. This post looks to highlight how to migrate to Flatcar Container Linux in two ways; modifying your deployment to install Flatcar Container Linux, and updating directly from CoreOS Container Linux.

Flatcar Container Linux enters new era after CoreOS End-of-Life announcement

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 12:10:00 -0700

Almost two years ago, we launched Flatcar Container Linux , a drop-in replacement for CoreOS Container Linux. Since then, we’ve made almost 200 releases , added an experimental edge channel , released the update server - Nebraska , (re-)introduced ARM support (which had been dropped by Red Hat), and introduced the Kinvolk Flatcar Container Linux Subscription .

But Flatcar Container Linux is about to enter a new era.

The New Era

Earlier this month, Red Hat announced the End of Life of CoreOS Container Linux will be May 26th. This was something that had been expected since soon after the CoreOS acquisition was announced; everyone knew it was coming, but now we have dates.

Flatcar Linux is now open to the public

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 12:00:00 +0200

A few weeks ago we announced Flatcar Linux , our effort to create a commercially supported fork of CoreOS’ container Linux . You can find the reasoning for the fork in our FAQ .

Since then we’ve been testing, improving our build process, establishing security procedures, and talking to testers about their experiences. We are now satisfied that Flatcar Linux is a stable and reliable container operating system that can be used in production clusters.

Announcing the Flatcar Linux project

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 17:05:56 +0200

Today Kinvolk announces Flatcar Linux , an immutable Linux distribution for containers. With this announcement, Kinvolk is opening the Flatcar Linux project to early testers. If you are interested in becoming a tester and willing to provide feedback, please let us know .

Flatcar Linux is a friendly fork of CoreOS’ Container Linux and as such, compatible with it. It is independently built, distributed and supported by the Kinvolk team.

Why fork Container Linux?

At Kinvolk, we provide support and engineering services for foundational open-source Linux projects used in cloud infrastructure. Last year we started getting inquiries about providing support for Container Linux. Since those inquiries, we had been thinking about how we could offer such support.