# LXD

11 Hacker News commenters recommended LXD and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Lightweight Linux system containers that run a full OS environment on little RAM. Critics say the latest version comes mainly via snap and networking needs setup.

## Why people recommend it

- Quick install, setup and cloning (3 comments): "clones an LXD container and I get all my repos and infra isolated in 5s" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735827)) "And it makes a new lxd container using my base image." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46641334)) "2 commands to install and setup lxd" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46641395))
- Lightweight full-system containers (2 comments): "Thankfully LXD is here to serve this need: very lightweight containers for systems, where your app runs in a complete ecosystem, but very light on the ram usage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45789892)) "LXD added some standard tooling, sort of Docker lite plus fewer restrictions in some aspects (systemd supported)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026199))
- Sandboxing with clean isolation (2 comments): "Sandboxing in a container in Linux isn't hard, if you use lxd/incus which ships with Ubuntu/Debian." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920569)) "clones an LXD container and I get all my repos and infra isolated in 5s" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735827))

## What people warn about

- Snap-only install for latest version (2 comments): "the only downside is that in order to get the latest version of LXD installed easily you'd have to do it via snap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863567)) "LXD is only available through snap, which caused multiple downtimes in the cluster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45930950))
- Networking needs careful configuration (2 comments): "though it does require a bit of faffing around with the networking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49905003)) "do not configure firewall to block non-their traffic, making the machine an open router" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633736))
- Default user can escalate to root (2 comments): "on a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 24+, the default user can privilege escalate to root using a few LXD commands." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517659)) "the first user created is part of the lxd group" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49501731))

## Cite as

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