Clear Linux OS and Containers

Whether you need optimized container images for development or a reliable host for containers, Clear Linux* OS offers versatility, scalability, and hardened security.

Features:

  • Performance
    Clear Linux OS is a performance-driven Linux distro for running workloads in the cloud. Clear Linux OS ranks faster on several benchmarks when tested on Intel® Core i9 and Intel® Xeon® processors. Software and libraries in Clear Linux OS are compiled with the latest optimizations, including Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions AVX-512 (Intel® AVX2-512).

  • Up-to-date software
    Clear Linux OS is a rolling release that bundles software which follows upstream source closely and updates frequently.

  • Security
    Clear Linux OS follows an aggressive security model and best practices for CVE patching. See our security page for more information.

  • Small size
    As a host, Clear Linux OS is lean and can host multiple containers without requiring many unnecessary packages. For containers, images are built using a multi-staged build approach to produce reduced container image size.
     


Clear Linux OS container images

Clear Linux offers an official Docker* build of Clear Linux OS as well as images of popular application based on Clear Linux OS. Clear Linux OS container images are designed to have familiar syntax by using the same container run syntax as the official versions images. With over 1M downloads and counting, getting started is easy!

Visit the documentation about container images to learn more.
 


Clear Linux OS as a container host

Clear Linux OS can be a flexible host for containers and is suitable for a simple single-node deployment for developers or complex multi-node clusters for production.
 

Clear Linux OS and Docker*

Getting started to run containers with Docker is as simple as adding the containers-basic bundle.

Visit the documentation about Docker on Clear Linux OS to learn more.
 

Clear Linux OS and Kata Containers*  

“Kata Containers* is an open source project building extremely lightweight virtual machines that seamlessly plug into the container ecosystem ,” per the Kata Containers website. With Clear Linux OS, adding Kata support to Docker means adding one bundle: containers-virt. That simplifies integration.

Kata Containers provide a dedicated kernel, enabling isolation of network, I/O, and memory, as well as support for industry standards such as OCI container format, Kubernetes* CRI, and legacy virtualization. 

Visit the documentation about Kata on Clear Linux OS to learn more.
 

Clear Linux OS and Kubernetes*

Clear Linux OS* in a Kubernetes certified distribution.

As an open source container orchestration system, Kubernetes* automates deployment, scaling, maintenance, and scheduling of application containers across clusters of nodes. Nodes in a cluster can run your applications or workloads. Installing Kubernetes on a Clear Linux node is simple and can be done automatically with Clear Linux cloud-native-setup scripts. To get started, you need only add one bundle: cloud-native-basic.

Kubernetes offers integration with various container runtimes (CRI) including runc and CRI+O. Kubernetes on Clear Linux makes it easy to configure integrations with Kata as a container runtime.

Learn how to install, configure, and deploy Kubernetes on Clear Linux OS.
 


Case studies and examples

Clear Linux OS provides several opportunities for container use-cases. Check out the pages below and let us know what you're doing with Clear Linux OS and containers!