LXC

What hackers pick instead

• PodmanA daemonless, rootless-by-default Docker alternative with systemd and Kubernetes-style pod integration; expect occasional Docker incompatibilities and extra setup work.276recommend
• OrbStackA fast, lightweight Docker Desktop replacement for macOS that runs containers and Linux VMs with little memory overhead; the per-seat license and closed-source model put some teams off.97recommend
• Apple containerApple's free, lightweight Linux container runtime for Mac; people value its per-container VM isolation and fast startup. Common caveats: missing Docker features and networking bugs.56recommend
• gVisorRecommended as a sandbox that intercepts syscalls so workloads never touch the host kernel, and it works without KVM. Main caveat: performance overhead and compatibility gaps.45recommend
• ColimaFree, open source Docker Desktop alternative for macOS that is easy to set up and reliable. Critics say it is slow.39recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 53 comments. Each links to the original.

1. all the host-level management of a non-ephemeral VM (including snapshots!), without the every-machine-has-its-own-kernel overhead

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “The web server deployment model breaks at hobby scale”

2. That's enough to catch mishaps like deleting all your sht while still being a reasonable transparent isolation layer.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: How are you sandboxing coding agents?”

3. This is by far the best option to isolate and easily create development environments that I found.

   Recommends · Nov 2025

4. Instead I'm using LXC containers in a VM, which are containers that look and feel like a VM.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Show HN: yolo-cage – AI coding agents that can't exfiltrate secrets”

5. LXC is probably better suited for reproducible build/development environments, over Docker.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Stop Using OpenCode”

6. running docker in an LXC containers grants a lot more isolation than docker on it's own

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “I got hacked: My Hetzner server started mining Monero”

7. Unprivileged LXCs get pretty close. Less unified design wise but on some aspects better

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Mini Shai-Hulud Strikes Again: 314 npm Packages Compromised”

8. I like using LXC containers, eg full persistent OS and you can do docker if you want

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Coding Agent VMs on NixOS with Microvm.nix”

9. I've been running perfectly usable alpine lxc system containers on as low as 32MB

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?”

10. It is currently my preferred "temp dev env" that behaves like a full system.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Show HN: Drop – A rootless Linux sandbox with gVisor support”

11. what not an unprivledged LXC container? The surface area is far smaller

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian”

12. LXC containers look and feel like VMs, but are very lightweight.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Code and Let Live”

13. by far the best balance of performance, isolation and control

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Show HN: A lightweight UI to manage my LXC dev environments”

14. the former allows you to have lighter & faster (share kernel)

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop”

15. LXC/Incus can be used if you want the shorter starting time

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Moving from GitHub to Codeberg, for lazy people”

16. unprivileged lxc/lxd container takes 2s to set up

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Nvidia NemoClaw”

17. bonus point that LXC containers feel like a VM

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Coding Agent VMs on NixOS with Microvm.nix”

18. the efficiency makes up for the initial hassle

    Recommends · Oct 2026

19. a miserable experience in the early days because the paint was still so fresh

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “What Has Docker Become?”

20. It's basically advanced chroot with more security limitations

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on”

21. But it was just too unreliable and we swapped it out

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Docker is weird”

22. Docker/LXC is not a security boundary

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “OpenAI bots knew about the RubyGems caching vulnerability”

23. it was all a house of cards

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Docker is weird”

24. Improving libvirt and making virtualization a first-class OS feature with a library interface

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “A Decade of Docker Containers”

25. I ended up creating an LXC on my homelab and providing it access there

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Don't YOLO your file system”

26. I have learned a ton with LXC and sort of moving away from VMs.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing”

27. I just throw it into an unpriviledged LXC and call it a day.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)”

28. The LXC way of getting an up per container is pretty great

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Docker is weird”

29. Containers like LXC and Docker were a bit easier to setup

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “A Decade of Docker Containers”

30. I like LXC containers and how they integrate with PBS.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I Like GitLab”

31. This appears to be an LXC-style alternative for macOS

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “macOS Container Machines”

32. get the same effect on my own hardware and for free

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Code and Let Live”

33. I might switch to LXC to reduce the weight somewhat

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Sandboxing AI Agents in Linux”

34. Linux has lxc, wich is much closer to Jails afaik.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Technical Beauty: FreeBSD Jails”

35. Check out LXC and the wider Incus set of projects

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Code and Let Live”

36. proxmox+lxc on zfs storage works fine in proxmox

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab”

37. Incus is amazing, or lxc and wayland in general.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor”

38. having performance of lxc and dx of docker

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Show HN: Proxmox-GitOps: Container Automation Framework”

39. Much prefer LXC + IaC to rebuild them

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “What I self-host”

40. It’s one of the reasons I like LXCs.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Linux containers in 500 lines of code (2016)”