VMware fires Photon missile

VMware has released version 1.0 of Photon OS, the lightweight Linux it cooked for containers running inside vSphere.

Available here on GitHub, the OS has a 384MB memory footprint and requires 396MB of disk space in minimalist configuration.

VMware says “kernel boot times are ~200ms”.

VMware's announcement of the 1.0 release comes a few days before DockerCon, where rival OS-for-containers players will likely make announcements of their own. VMware is positioning Photon as “open source software that’s been vetted by VMware engineering, support and guest OS validation teams as well as thousands in the community.” Which is a round-about way of saying “if you want to run containers inside vSphere, those other lightweight Linuxes are rather more risky than Photon.” ®