Running large numbers of containers to deploy an application requires a rethink of the role of the operating system. Google’s Container-Optimized OS and AWS’s Bottlerocket take the traditional virtualization paradigm and apply it to the operating system, with containers the virtual OS and a minimal Linux fulfilling the role of the hypervisor.
Various flavors of Linux optimized for containers have been around for a few years and have evolved ever smaller footprints as the management and user-land utilities moved to the cluster management layer or to containers. These container-optimized operating systems are ideal when you need to run applications in Kubernetes with minimal setup and do not want to worry about security or updates, or want OS support from your cloud provider.
