cloudius-systems/osv
OSv, a new operating system for the cloud. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
67/100
- Activity 98
- Release rhythm 8
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_license
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-02. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 5004
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 16
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
4263 stars · 610 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
OSv is an open-source modular unikernel operating system designed to run single unmodified Linux applications securely as microVMs on top of a hypervisor. It boots in as fast as ~5 ms with as little as 11 MB of memory, targeting effortless deployment of microservices and serverless applications.
Use cases
- run a single Linux application as a lightweight microVM
- deploy microservices with minimal OS overhead
- run JVM, Python, Node.js, or Go apps in a unikernel
- boot VMs in milliseconds on Firecracker for serverless workloads
- package a native C/C++ or Rust app as a cloud image
- run unmodified Linux binaries on QEMU/KVM, Xen, VMware, or EC2
When to choose
- you need minimal boot times and memory footprint for a single application
- you want to run unmodified Linux binaries without porting to a unikernel API
- you are deploying microservices or serverless functions as microVMs
- you need a small, secure attack surface compared to a full Linux guest
When to avoid
- you need a general-purpose OS with multiple applications, shells, and full package management
- your application depends on Linux kernel features or drivers OSv does not implement
- you need broad hardware support on physical machines rather than hypervisors
- you require a large, well-funded maintenance community - it is maintained by a small group of volunteers
Facets
application · maturity active
microservices serverless operating-systems cloud-computing infrastructure-as-code windows cross-platform unikernel microvm linux-binary-compatible hypervisor firecracker qemu x86-64 aarch64 cloud-native minimal-os operating-systems virtualization containers linux macos
1 source
- readme: https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv · fetched 2026-08-28 · bf761145730d
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| cloudius-systems/osv | main | 67 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="cloudius-systems/osv")
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem