includeos/IncludeOS

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

5247 stars · 396 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

IncludeOS is a minimal, resource-efficient unikernel operating system for C++ services, linked directly into your application via `#include <os>`. It produces tiny virtual machines (a few MB) that boot in milliseconds and run on KVM, VirtualBox, VMWare, or bare x86 hardware.

Use cases

• build a minimal cloud service without a general-purpose OS
• run a C++ web server in a tiny VM with a few MB of memory
• deploy microservices with millisecond boot times
• create secure single-purpose virtual machines
• run C++ services on KVM, VMware, or VirtualBox
• reduce cloud VM overhead and attack surface

When to choose

• you need extremely low memory footprint and fast boot for a C++ service
• you want a single-purpose VM without a full OS underneath
• you're deploying to KVM/VMware/cloud providers and want minimal overhead
• you're comfortable with an evolving, not-yet-stable API

When to avoid

• you need threads or file streams, which lack full backend support
• you need a stable, production-hardened OS with long-term API guarantees
• your service depends on a full POSIX environment or arbitrary Linux software
• you're not writing C++

Facets

library · maturity active

http-server networking web-framework concurrency operating-systems cloud-computing developer-tools performance cpp cloud unikernel virtualization operating-system minimal-footprint kvm tcp-ip-stack single-address-space linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="includeos/IncludeOS")