
Photon – Minimal Linux Container Host - frostmatthew
https://vmware.github.io/photon/
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peterwwillis
The ISO is 959 megabytes. I wouldn't call this minimal.

~~~
scott_karana
That's a superb point. I was assuming this would be Debian netinst size
(222MB) and wouldn't have known otherwise if it wasn't for your comment.

Makes me wonder how minimal it really is. :-)

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travem
Installing this in a VM it appears there are four installation options: 1\.
Photon OS (Micro) 2\. Photon Container OS (Minimal) 3\. Photon Full OS (All)
4\. Photon Custom OS

Looking at the Photon Getting Started Guide (for Fusion)[1] it looks like the
same ISO is intended to support multiple types of installation, so it is not
the ISO that is necessarily optimized but the resulting OS (based on the
selection in the installation) that is supposed to be.

[1] Page 10 of
[https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/getting_started...](https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/getting_started_with_photon_on_vmware_fusion.pdf)

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Zikes
This seems to be operating in the same space as CoreOS, but doesn't list any
differentiators. How does it compare?

~~~
wmf
For one thing, it has about a hundred ™ symbols. Maybe lawyers are an untapped
market for containers. It's also propping up Pivotal's fork of Docker that
doesn't get much love.

~~~
vito
> fork of Docker

wat

[https://github.com/docker/docker/commit/a27b4b8cb8e838d03a99...](https://github.com/docker/docker/commit/a27b4b8cb8e838d03a99b6d2b30f76bdaf2f9e5d)

Jan 18, 2013

[https://github.com/cloudfoundry-
incubator/garden/commit/9c79...](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-
incubator/garden/commit/9c79a50b455191bf1b6e1ea9e1b4087ede43d99e)

Dec 6, 2011

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hapless
I'm less excited by the distribution than the package system. VMware wrote a
dnf/yum replacement in pure C, with no python dependencies:

[https://github.com/vmware/photon/blob/master/tyum.md](https://github.com/vmware/photon/blob/master/tyum.md)

This is what makes it possible for Photon to be so small, but still have yum-
like features.

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hamburglar
They should add "why is this FAQ a PDF?" to their FAQ.

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jamiesonbecker
Why not just image Alpine Linux[1] for an awesome minimal Linux, or
RancherOS[2] for a minimal Docker host (or CoreOS) and be done with it?

Kinda reminds me of Unbreakable Linux.. just because you can doesn't mean you
should.

1\. [http://www.alpinelinux.org/](http://www.alpinelinux.org/)

2\. [http://rancher.com/rancher-os/](http://rancher.com/rancher-os/)

~~~
frostmatthew
From the FAQ[1]

 _For vSphere customers, Project Photon can extend the capabilities of the
software-defined data center such as security, identity and resource
management to containerized workloads. Organizations can then leverage a
single infrastructure architecture for both traditional and cloudnative Apps,
and leverage existing investments in tools, skills and technologies_

 _Project Photon can deliver performance through kernel tuning to remove
redundant caching between the Linux kernel and the vSphere hypervisor, and
advanced security services through network micro-segmentation delivered by
VMware NSX_

[1]
[https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/photon_faqs.pdf](https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/photon_faqs.pdf)

