CoreOS Linux Distribution Pushed To Stable Release

The new Linux distro designed for massive server deployments known as CoreOS, has been officially declared ‘production ready’ after it was moved to the stable release channel.

CoreOS arrived as a beta back in May, but the system first appeared in alpha in 2013, and has been backed by influential venture capital outfits such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sqeuoia Capital.

Docker-based

CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi announced the production ready distro in a blog posting last Friday.

“We think we have a pretty good SysAdmin surprise in store for you today as we are announcing the CoreOS stable release channel,” wrote Polvi. “Starting today, you can begin running CoreOS in production. This version is the most tested, secure and reliable version available for users wanting to run CoreOS. This is a huge milestone for us.”

“It is a big day for us here at CoreOS, as we have been working hard to deliver the stable release. Of course, we couldn’t do this without the community so thank you for all of your support and contributions to the project,” Polvi wrote.

But he warned that the stable release does not include etcd and fleet as stable, as this will arrive in latest releases.

The CoreOS distro is aimed at massive server deployments, and has been engineered by learning the lessons from web giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others, all of whom run services at a very large scale indeed.

To this end, CoreOS occupies a tiny footprint, apparently using approximately 40 percent less RAM than a typical Linux distro. This makes it ideally suited for cloud environments and large-scale data centres.

CoreOS utilises the Docker containerisation system for applications, and apps are run within containers – so they are virtualised and can be moved between systems without having to have a virtual machine for every one. This, for example, allows system administrators to move projects between development and operations quickly and easily.

The full stablised version (CoreOS 367.1.0) is now available for download here.

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