# LXC

34 Hacker News commenters recommended LXC and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Lightweight Linux containers that feel like full VMs, with a persistent OS, low overhead and good isolation. Critics note they are not a real security boundary.

## Why people recommend it

- Feels like a VM but lightweight (5 comments): "all the host-level management of a non-ephemeral VM (including snapshots!), without the every-machine-has-its-own-kernel overhead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212180)) "Instead I'm using LXC containers in a VM, which are containers that look and feel like a VM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709003)) "LXC containers look and feel like VMs, but are very lightweight." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46571542))
- Low overhead, fast to start (5 comments): "I've been running perfectly usable alpine lxc system containers on as low as 32MB" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46822296)) "the former allows you to have lighter & faster (share kernel)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903548)) "LXC/Incus can be used if you want the shorter starting time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47538880))
- Good isolation for its weight (5 comments): "That's enough to catch mishaps like deleting all your sht while still being a reasonable transparent isolation layer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401450)) "running docker in an LXC containers grants a lot more isolation than docker on it's own" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309106)) "Unprivileged LXCs get pretty close. Less unified design wise but on some aspects better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48191388))
- Persistent, reproducible dev environments (4 comments): "This is by far the best option to isolate and easily create development environments that I found." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46081196)) "LXC is probably better suited for reproducible build/development environments, over Docker." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983908)) "I like using LXC containers, eg full persistent OS and you can do docker if you want" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46894497))

## What people warn about

- Not a real security boundary (2 comments): "It's basically advanced chroot with more security limitations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026199)) "Docker/LXC is not a security boundary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700148))
- Unreliable and fragile in practice (3 comments): "a miserable experience in the early days because the paint was still so fresh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46736018)) "But it was just too unreliable and we swapped it out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50203555)) "it was all a house of cards" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50204489))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Podman](https://hackerapproved.com/p/podman.md): 276 recommend
- [OrbStack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/orbstack.md): 97 recommend
- [Apple container](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-container.md): 56 recommend
- [gVisor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gvisor.md): 45 recommend
- [Colima](https://hackerapproved.com/p/colima.md): 39 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "LXC", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lxc/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).