# Incus 90 Hacker News commenters recommended Incus and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.5 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend Incus as one tool for VMs, system containers and OCI containers, with a clean CLI and reliable releases, though critics find onboarding and defaults hard. ## Why people recommend it - Runs VMs and containers under one CLI (6 comments): "I'm a huge fan of Incus. VMs, LXC, and OCI containers all under the same Docker-like CLI interface." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50203750)) "It can do VMs, "system containers" like LXC and Docker/OCI-compatible application containers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933786)) "presents a consistent management language for system containers, OCI containers, and VMs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929078)) - Isolates AI agents and sandboxes well (5 comments): "Ever since I started running coding agents with shell access I've jailed them inside of VMs. Since I run Linux I can just use incus for the VM management layer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896017)) "Running IncusOS on some local hardware with ZFS underneath is a phenomenally powerful sandbox." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46574114)) "I've been successful with getting incus running with this for sandboxing the opencode session." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47685588)) - Networking and storage work out of box (3 comments): "a big advantage of the 'full-stack' approach is things like network config, storage management, boot safety etc all work out of the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935560)) "you bridge them, you get DHCP allocation identical to running a little PC on the local LAN" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46714548)) "It looks like it may handle networking (via ovn) a bit better than what I have now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45962426)) - Reliable releases and helpful community (2 comments): "Fantastic software, steady stream of reliable releases, helpful community... Incus is great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45934175)) "Incus does everything (and more) with better interface, WAY better reliability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980398)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Proxmox VE](https://hackerapproved.com/p/proxmox-ve.md): 208 recommend - [KVM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kvm.md): 32 recommend - [bhyve hypervisor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bhyve.md): 17 recommend - [Sylve](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sylve.md): 17 recommend - [Xen hypervisor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xen.md): 12 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Incus", https://hackerapproved.com/p/incus/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).