Incus vs LXD

Photo by Guillaume Bolduc on Unsplash

Introduction

Linux Containers (LXC) have revolutionized the way we think about virtualization and resource isolation. Two prominent projects in this domain are LXD, developed by Canonical, and its recent fork, Incus[1][2].

Background

Canonical took complete control of the LXD project, which garnered mixed reactions[1]. In response, a new fork of LXD, named Incus, was created[1]. This fork is backed by the Linux Containers project and is led by Aleksa Sarai of SUSE and Stéphane Graber, the former lead engineer of LXD[1][2].

Differences

Incus and LXD have several differences, some of which are:

1. Group Usage: LXD uses the group “lxd”, while Incus uses the groups “incus” and “incus-admin”[3].
2. Network Bridge: LXD uses the default network lxdbr0, but Incus uses incusbr0[3].
3. Domain Suffix: LXD uses .lxd domain suffix for containers, while Incus uses .incus by default[3].
4. Dependencies: Incus has made efforts to remove dependencies on Ubuntu and Canonical technologies and services[2].

Future Directions

Incus aims to provide a fully community-led alternative to Canonical’s LXD[1]. The initial set of maintainers for Incus includes Christian…