Alternatives to RancherOS logo

Alternatives to RancherOS

CoreOS, Rancher, Ubuntu, Kubernetes, and Portainer are the most popular alternatives and competitors to RancherOS.
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What is RancherOS and what are its top alternatives?

RancherOS is a minimalist Linux distribution perfect for running Docker containers. It is designed to reduce maintenance overhead and operating system footprint by running the system services in Docker containers. RancherOS eliminates the need for a traditional package manager and includes utilities like Docker Compose. However, users may find it challenging to customize the system due to its limited features and lack of flexibility.

  1. CoreOS Container Linux: CoreOS Container Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution optimized for running containerized applications. It offers automated updates, strong security features, and an easy deployment process. However, users may find it lacking in some customizability compared to RancherOS.
  2. Ubuntu Core: Ubuntu Core is a minimal, secure, and transactionally updated version of Ubuntu. It is designed for IoT, cloud, and containers, offering a wide range of applications and tools for developers. Compared to RancherOS, Ubuntu Core provides a more traditional Linux experience that some users may prefer.
  3. Atomic Host: Atomic Host is a lightweight, minimized OS based on Fedora and CentOS designed for containerized workloads. It includes tools to manage atomic updates and a DevOps-friendly environment. However, users may encounter limitations in terms of package availability when compared to RancherOS.
  4. Flatcar Container Linux: Flatcar Container Linux is based on CoreOS Container Linux and offers a lightweight, container-optimized Linux distribution. It provides automated updates, security features, and reliability for running container workloads. Compared to RancherOS, Flatcar Container Linux has a strong focus on security and stability.
  5. Fedora CoreOS: Fedora CoreOS is an automatically updating, minimal operating system designed for running containerized workloads. It combines the best features from CoreOS Container Linux, Project Atomic, and Fedora, providing an agile platform for deploying applications. Users may find Fedora CoreOS to be more user-friendly and versatile compared to RancherOS.
  6. Photon OS: Photon OS is a minimal Linux container host optimized for running on VMware platforms. It includes Docker support, as well as container runtime, and is designed for cloud-native applications. Compared to RancherOS, Photon OS offers better integration with VMware products and tools.
  7. Alpine Linux: Alpine Linux is a security-focused, lightweight Linux distribution with a small footprint. It is well-suited for containerized environments and provides package management through apk. Users may prefer Alpine Linux over RancherOS for its simplicity, security features, and versatile package management.
  8. OpenShift Container Platform: OpenShift Container Platform is a Kubernetes-based container platform for deploying and managing containerized applications. It offers built-in container orchestration, monitoring, and scaling capabilities. Compared to RancherOS, OpenShift Container Platform provides a more comprehensive solution for container management and application deployment.
  9. SUSE CaaS Platform: SUSE CaaS Platform is a container management solution that simplifies application delivery and lifecycle management. It is based on Kubernetes and includes features like automated scaling, monitoring, and self-service capabilities. Users may find SUSE CaaS Platform to be a robust alternative to RancherOS for enterprise container deployments.
  10. CentOS Atomic Host: CentOS Atomic Host is a minimal footprint operating system designed for running containers. It includes tools for managing atomic updates and a container-optimized environment. Comparable to RancherOS, CentOS Atomic Host provides a lightweight, secure platform for container workloads.

Top Alternatives to RancherOS

  • CoreOS
    CoreOS

    It is designed for security, consistency, and reliability. Instead of installing packages via yum or apt, it uses Linux containers to manage your services at a higher level of abstraction. A single service's code and all dependencies are packaged within a container that can be run on one or many machines. ...

  • Rancher
    Rancher

    Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform. ...

  • Ubuntu
    Ubuntu

    Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers. ...

  • Kubernetes
    Kubernetes

    Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions. ...

  • Portainer
    Portainer

    It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code. ...

  • Debian
    Debian

    Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel. Linux is a piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. FreeBSD is an operating system including a kernel and other software. ...

  • k3s
    k3s

    Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server. ...

  • JavaScript
    JavaScript

    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles. ...

RancherOS alternatives & related posts

CoreOS logo

CoreOS

224
298
44
Linux for Massive Server Deployments
224
298
+ 1
44
PROS OF COREOS
  • 20
    Container management
  • 15
    Lightweight
  • 9
    Systemd
CONS OF COREOS
  • 3
    End-of-lifed

related CoreOS posts

Rancher logo

Rancher

957
1.5K
644
Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service
957
1.5K
+ 1
644
PROS OF RANCHER
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
  • 58
    Simple
  • 44
    Rolling upgrades, green/blue upgrades feature
  • 42
    Dns and service discovery out-of-the-box
  • 37
    Only requires docker
  • 34
    Multitenant and permission management
  • 29
    Easy to use and feature rich
  • 11
    Cross cloud compatible
  • 11
    Does everything needed for a docker infrastructure
  • 8
    Simple and powerful
  • 8
    Next-gen platform
  • 7
    Very Docker-friendly
  • 6
    Support Kubernetes and Swarm
  • 6
    Application catalogs with stack templates (wizards)
  • 6
    Supports Apache Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes
  • 6
    Rolling and blue/green upgrades deployments
  • 6
    High Availability service: keeps your app up 24/7
  • 5
    Easy to use service catalog
  • 4
    Very intuitive UI
  • 4
    IaaS-vendor independent, supports hybrid/multi-cloud
  • 4
    Awesome support
  • 3
    Scalable
  • 2
    Requires less infrastructure requirements
CONS OF RANCHER
  • 10
    Hosting Rancher can be complicated

related Rancher posts

Ubuntu logo

Ubuntu

78.6K
57.9K
468
The leading OS for PC, tablet, phone and cloud
78.6K
57.9K
+ 1
468
PROS OF UBUNTU
  • 230
    Free to use
  • 96
    Easy setup for testing discord bot
  • 57
    Gateway Linux Distro
  • 54
    Simple interface
  • 9
    Don't need driver installation in most cases
  • 6
    Open Source
  • 6
    Many active communities
  • 3
    Software Availability
  • 3
    Easy to custom
  • 2
    Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu
  • 1
    Lightweight container base OS
  • 1
    Great OotB Linux Shell Experience
CONS OF UBUNTU
  • 5
    Demanding system requirements
  • 4
    Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian
  • 2
    Snapd installed by default
  • 1
    Systemd

related Ubuntu posts

CDG

I use Laravel because it's the most advances PHP framework out there, easy to maintain, easy to upgrade and most of all : easy to get a handle on, and to follow every new technology ! PhpStorm is our main software to code, as of simplicity and full range of tools for a modern application.

Google Analytics Analytics of course for a tailored analytics, Bulma as an innovative CSS framework, coupled with our Sass (Scss) pre-processor.

As of more basic stuff, we use HTML5, JavaScript (but with Vue.js too) and Webpack to handle the generation of all this.

To deploy, we set up Buddy to easily send the updates on our nginx / Ubuntu server, where it will connect to our GitHub Git private repository, pull and do all the operations needed with Deployer .

CloudFlare ensure the rapidity of distribution of our content, and Let's Encrypt the https certificate that is more than necessary when we'll want to sell some products with our Stripe api calls.

Asana is here to let us list all the functionalities, possibilities and ideas we want to implement.

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Tassanai Singprom

This is my stack in Application & Data

JavaScript PHP HTML5 jQuery Redis Amazon EC2 Ubuntu Sass Vue.js Firebase Laravel Lumen Amazon RDS GraphQL MariaDB

My Utilities Tools

Google Analytics Postman Elasticsearch

My Devops Tools

Git GitHub GitLab npm Visual Studio Code Kibana Sentry BrowserStack

My Business Tools

Slack

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Kubernetes logo

Kubernetes

59.8K
51.7K
681
Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops
59.8K
51.7K
+ 1
681
PROS OF KUBERNETES
  • 166
    Leading docker container management solution
  • 129
    Simple and powerful
  • 107
    Open source
  • 76
    Backed by google
  • 58
    The right abstractions
  • 25
    Scale services
  • 20
    Replication controller
  • 11
    Permission managment
  • 9
    Supports autoscaling
  • 8
    Simple
  • 8
    Cheap
  • 6
    Self-healing
  • 5
    Open, powerful, stable
  • 5
    Reliable
  • 5
    No cloud platform lock-in
  • 5
    Promotes modern/good infrascture practice
  • 4
    Scalable
  • 4
    Quick cloud setup
  • 3
    Custom and extensibility
  • 3
    Captain of Container Ship
  • 3
    Cloud Agnostic
  • 3
    Backed by Red Hat
  • 3
    Runs on azure
  • 3
    A self healing environment with rich metadata
  • 2
    Everything of CaaS
  • 2
    Gke
  • 2
    Golang
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 2
    Expandable
  • 2
    Sfg
CONS OF KUBERNETES
  • 16
    Steep learning curve
  • 15
    Poor workflow for development
  • 8
    Orchestrates only infrastructure
  • 4
    High resource requirements for on-prem clusters
  • 2
    Too heavy for simple systems
  • 1
    Additional vendor lock-in (Docker)
  • 1
    More moving parts to secure
  • 1
    Additional Technology Overhead

related Kubernetes posts

Conor Myhrvold
Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 44 upvotes · 12.6M views

How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:

Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.

Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:

https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/

(GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)

Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark

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Yshay Yaacobi

Our first experience with .NET core was when we developed our OSS feature management platform - Tweek (https://github.com/soluto/tweek). We wanted to create a solution that is able to run anywhere (super important for OSS), has excellent performance characteristics and can fit in a multi-container architecture. We decided to implement our rule engine processor in F# , our main service was implemented in C# and other components were built using JavaScript / TypeScript and Go.

Visual Studio Code worked really well for us as well, it worked well with all our polyglot services and the .Net core integration had great cross-platform developer experience (to be fair, F# was a bit trickier) - actually, each of our team members used a different OS (Ubuntu, macos, windows). Our production deployment ran for a time on Docker Swarm until we've decided to adopt Kubernetes with almost seamless migration process.

After our positive experience of running .Net core workloads in containers and developing Tweek's .Net services on non-windows machines, C# had gained back some of its popularity (originally lost to Node.js), and other teams have been using it for developing microservices, k8s sidecars (like https://github.com/Soluto/airbag), cli tools, serverless functions and other projects...

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Portainer logo

Portainer

494
834
146
Open source tool for managing containerized applications
494
834
+ 1
146
PROS OF PORTAINER
  • 36
    Simple
  • 27
    Great UI
  • 19
    Friendly
  • 12
    Easy to setup, gives a practical interface for Docker
  • 11
    Fully featured
  • 11
    Because it just works, super simple yet powerful
  • 9
    A must for Docker DevOps
  • 7
    Free and opensource
  • 5
    It's simple, fast and the support is great
  • 5
    API
  • 4
    Template Support
CONS OF PORTAINER
    Be the first to leave a con

    related Portainer posts

    Wallace Alves
    Cyber Security Analyst · | 2 upvotes · 867.8K views

    Docker Docker Compose Portainer ELK Elasticsearch Kibana Logstash nginx

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    Charles Coleman
    President/CEO at Rapidfyre · | 2 upvotes · 287.1K views
    Shared insights
    on
    PortainerPortainerDockerDocker

    I've found Portainer to be a like the 8 tooled jacknife I need for Docker and am loving it. Wasn't hard to get up and going and is well rounded enough to do everything I need. Win win.

    See more
    Debian logo

    Debian

    16K
    11K
    164
    The Universal Operating System
    16K
    11K
    + 1
    164
    PROS OF DEBIAN
    • 54
      Massively supported
    • 50
      Stable
    • 21
      Reliable
    • 9
      Aptitude
    • 8
      Customizable
    • 8
      It is free
    • 8
      Turnkey linux use it
    • 6
      Works on all architectures
    CONS OF DEBIAN
    • 10
      Old versions of software
    • 2
      Can be difficult to set up on vanilla Debian

    related Debian posts

    Labinator Team

    At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.

    WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.

    For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.

    Main Advantages Of Sass:

    • It's CSS syntax friendly
    • It offers variables
    • It uses a nested syntax
    • It includes mixins
    • Great community and online support.
    • Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.

    As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.

    The Benefits Of Using PHP:

    • Open Source.
    • Highly Extendible.
    • Easy to learn and read.
    • Platform independent.
    • Compatible with APACHE.
    • Low development and maintenance cost.
    • Great community and support.
    • Detailed documentation that has everything you need!

    Why PHP 7.3+?

    • Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
    • A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
    See more
    Jason Martin
    Senior PHP Developer at Orange · | 14 upvotes · 87.8K views
    Shared insights
    on
    LaravelLaravelMySQLMySQLDebianDebian

    For your purposes, I recommend @Laravel, or even @Symfony or @Yii, or whatever. In your use case, a framework is 100% indicated, because it will cut your boilerplate in half or more, and you'll have a pre-fab organization for files, classes and so on. Personally, I am not a fan of Frameworks, because they tend to take over your project like cancer and trap you. But for an internal app to manage stuff, it's probably the best idea to use one (preferably one you like).

    When doing internal apps, your best bet is to stick the essentials and basics, try Laravel with MySQL on a nice Debian virtual machine. Can't go wrong.

    See more
    k3s logo

    k3s

    94
    250
    16
    Lightweight Kubernetes. 5 less than k8s (by Rancher Labs)
    94
    250
    + 1
    16
    PROS OF K3S
    • 6
      Lightweight
    • 4
      Easy
    • 2
      Replication Controller
    • 2
      Scale Services
    • 2
      Open Source
    CONS OF K3S
      Be the first to leave a con

      related k3s posts

      Enzo Gehlen
      Web Developer at IXCSoft · | 2 upvotes · 32.2K views
      Shared insights
      on
      k3sk3sK3dK3d

      Would you use K3d/k3s in an LXC container?

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      JavaScript logo

      JavaScript

      360.2K
      274K
      8.1K
      Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions
      360.2K
      274K
      + 1
      8.1K
      PROS OF JAVASCRIPT
      • 1.7K
        Can be used on frontend/backend
      • 1.5K
        It's everywhere
      • 1.2K
        Lots of great frameworks
      • 898
        Fast
      • 745
        Light weight
      • 425
        Flexible
      • 392
        You can't get a device today that doesn't run js
      • 286
        Non-blocking i/o
      • 237
        Ubiquitousness
      • 191
        Expressive
      • 55
        Extended functionality to web pages
      • 49
        Relatively easy language
      • 46
        Executed on the client side
      • 30
        Relatively fast to the end user
      • 25
        Pure Javascript
      • 21
        Functional programming
      • 15
        Async
      • 13
        Full-stack
      • 12
        Setup is easy
      • 12
        Future Language of The Web
      • 12
        Its everywhere
      • 11
        Because I love functions
      • 11
        JavaScript is the New PHP
      • 10
        Like it or not, JS is part of the web standard
      • 9
        Expansive community
      • 9
        Everyone use it
      • 9
        Can be used in backend, frontend and DB
      • 9
        Easy
      • 8
        Most Popular Language in the World
      • 8
        Powerful
      • 8
        Can be used both as frontend and backend as well
      • 8
        For the good parts
      • 8
        No need to use PHP
      • 8
        Easy to hire developers
      • 7
        Agile, packages simple to use
      • 7
        Love-hate relationship
      • 7
        Photoshop has 3 JS runtimes built in
      • 7
        Evolution of C
      • 7
        It's fun
      • 7
        Hard not to use
      • 7
        Versitile
      • 7
        Its fun and fast
      • 7
        Nice
      • 7
        Popularized Class-Less Architecture & Lambdas
      • 7
        Supports lambdas and closures
      • 6
        It let's me use Babel & Typescript
      • 6
        Can be used on frontend/backend/Mobile/create PRO Ui
      • 6
        1.6K Can be used on frontend/backend
      • 6
        Client side JS uses the visitors CPU to save Server Res
      • 6
        Easy to make something
      • 5
        Clojurescript
      • 5
        Promise relationship
      • 5
        Stockholm Syndrome
      • 5
        Function expressions are useful for callbacks
      • 5
        Scope manipulation
      • 5
        Everywhere
      • 5
        Client processing
      • 5
        What to add
      • 4
        Because it is so simple and lightweight
      • 4
        Only Programming language on browser
      • 1
        Test
      • 1
        Hard to learn
      • 1
        Test2
      • 1
        Not the best
      • 1
        Easy to understand
      • 1
        Subskill #4
      • 1
        Easy to learn
      • 0
        Hard 彤
      CONS OF JAVASCRIPT
      • 22
        A constant moving target, too much churn
      • 20
        Horribly inconsistent
      • 15
        Javascript is the New PHP
      • 9
        No ability to monitor memory utilitization
      • 8
        Shows Zero output in case of ANY error
      • 7
        Thinks strange results are better than errors
      • 6
        Can be ugly
      • 3
        No GitHub
      • 2
        Slow
      • 0
        HORRIBLE DOCUMENTS, faulty code, repo has bugs

      related JavaScript posts

      Zach Holman

      Oof. I have truly hated JavaScript for a long time. Like, for over twenty years now. Like, since the Clinton administration. It's always been a nightmare to deal with all of the aspects of that silly language.

      But wowza, things have changed. Tooling is just way, way better. I'm primarily web-oriented, and using React and Apollo together the past few years really opened my eyes to building rich apps. And I deeply apologize for using the phrase rich apps; I don't think I've ever said such Enterprisey words before.

      But yeah, things are different now. I still love Rails, and still use it for a lot of apps I build. But it's that silly rich apps phrase that's the problem. Users have way more comprehensive expectations than they did even five years ago, and the JS community does a good job at building tools and tech that tackle the problems of making heavy, complicated UI and frontend work.

      Obviously there's a lot of things happening here, so just saying "JavaScript isn't terrible" might encompass a huge amount of libraries and frameworks. But if you're like me, yeah, give things another shot- I'm somehow not hating on JavaScript anymore and... gulp... I kinda love it.

      See more
      Conor Myhrvold
      Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 44 upvotes · 12.6M views

      How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:

      Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.

      Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:

      https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/

      (GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)

      Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark

      See more