Running containers with platforms such as Docker [1] or Podman [2] can be accomplished on any Linux distribution. However, because configuring and managing the containers is already quite involved, you probably don't want to deal too much with the host operating system as well. An immutable operating system can prove invaluable. After its initial configuration, there's no need for manual management tasks. The immutable operating system just works as a robust foundation for your containers.

In an earlier Linux Magazine article [3], I covered openSUSE MicroOS [4], an immutable version of the openSUSE Linux distribution. I'll use openSUSE MicroOS as the host operating system to run Podman containers. For more detailed information on the operating system, consult my earlier article. To simplify managing and monitoring my containers, I'll use Cockpit [5], a web-based user interface for servers.

MicroOS requires at least 1GB of RAM, though more is advisable if you plan to run many containers. The root partition must be at least 5GB, and the partition where /var is mounted should also be at least 5GB. Again, more space may be necessary, depending on your container workloads. I have installed MicroOS in a virtual machine with 1.5GB of RAM, a 13GB root partition, and a 20GB /var partition. This setup has been operating smoothly with 11 containers for over six months. To be a bit more future-proof, increasing the RAM to 2GB and adding a few more gigabytes to the root partition could be beneficial, but, so far, it has been working flawlessly.

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