# linuxkit/linuxkit

A toolkit for building secure, portable and lean operating systems for containers

Repository: https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/linuxkit
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: linux, devops-tools, containers, cloud, linuxkit, immutable-infrastructure
Last push: 2026-06-03T14:29:49+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 75/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 85, release rhythm 48, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3933, "days_push": 91, "days_rel": 351, "gap_med": 7.0, "n_releases_24m": 13}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 8642, forks 1022 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:23.962103+00:00)

## What it is
LinuxKit is a toolkit for building custom minimal, immutable, and secure Linux distributions optimized for running containers. It produces lean OS images for VMs and bare metal across x86_64, arm64, and s390x architectures.

## Use cases
- build a minimal immutable linux os for running containers
- create custom lightweight linux distributions for kubernetes nodes
- build secure container-optimized boot images for bare metal
- generate reproducible minimal vm images for cloud instances
- build a stateless linux os with immutable root filesystem
- create tiny linux images for embedded or edge container workloads

## When to choose
- you need a minimal, immutable, container-focused linux os built from scratch
- you want reproducible builds of custom linux distributions
- you are running container orchestration platforms like kubernetes on lean os images
- you need multi-architecture (x86_64, arm64, s390x) minimal os images

## When to avoid
- you need a general-purpose desktop or server linux distribution with a package manager
- you want a mutable system with in-place package upgrades
- you need broad out-of-the-box hardware driver support
- you are not comfortable assembling os images from container-based components

## Facets
- artifact type: infra-config
- maturity: active
- function: container-runtime, infrastructure-as-code, build-tool, security, deployment
- domain: cloud-computing, operating-systems, infrastructure-as-code, security
- platform: go, cross-platform, cli
- tags: immutable-infrastructure, minimal-linux, custom-distributions, reproducible-builds, container-optimized-os, vm-images, bare-metal, containers, devops, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- linuxkit/linuxkit (main) score 75

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:23.962103+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:25:46.751346+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:23.962103+00:00, sha 747ed28c1918)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.