Fedora/CentOS bootc Documentation

Over the last decade, OCI containers have become a de facto way to deploy a complete functioning Linux user space as an application. A large set of practices and tooling have evolved around them. Bootable containers are a modern opinionated way of deploying, configuring and managing immutable image based Linux systems using those practices and tooling. You can find a mission statement on github.com/containers/bootable.

The bootc documentation summarizes bootable containers as "transactional, in-place operating system updates using OCI/Docker container images". In other words, updates to the operating system (OS) are shipped by using container images. That implies that the Linux kernel, the bootloader, drivers, etc. are all part of the container image which renders the container image "bootable".

Just like ordinary application containers, you can build bootable containers by using existing container technologies such as Containerfiles (i.e., Dockerfiles) and with existing tooling such as Podman, Docker or buildkit. You can further store the images on any container registry such as Quay.io, Docker Hub, the GitHub Container Registry or any internal container registry.

Bootable containers are a natural evolution of container technologies. For over a decade, containers have evolved into an industry standard of bundling, shipping, and deploying applications. Bootable containers built on top of these existing technologies and extend containers to include the entire operating system along with the Linux kernel to allow for a comprehensive container-native workflow and user experience.

For more information, please see the Getting Started Guide.