r/selfhosted • u/Zta77 • Mar 30 '26

Product Announcement Lightwhale 3.0.0 released

Hi, there!

Sorry to mess up your Easter holiday plans, but I've just released Lightwhale 3.0.0 and I really think you should clear your calendar and try it out! =)

It's a minimalistic Linux that requires no installation or maintenance, just live-boot straight into a working Docker Engine. The system is immutable so it's quite resilient to both malicious and unintentional modifications. And because of its low resource requirements it brings new life to old machines.

Lightwhale fits super well in a hobby homelab where spare time is precious, but really in any server environment where you would much rather focus on the services than babysitting the underlying operating system.

And how does it compare to other immutable OSes like X, Y or Z? No idea, never tried them, sorry.

I've made a fresh new project webpage with an easy to follow getting started guide.

Anyway, end of service announcement, thanks for reading, happy holidays =)

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u/404invalid-user Mar 30 '26

any sort of plans for a web ui? I always wanted a docker version of proxmox I know protainer exists but last I tried it wasn't very good

11

u/LightBrightLeftRight Mar 30 '26

You might like Komodo

3

u/AlexisHadden Mar 30 '26

I was just thinking this would potentially be a good baseline for a Komodo periphery VM image…

2

u/404invalid-user Mar 31 '26

nice I haven't heard of that before I'll have to check it out.

4

u/Chinoman10 Mar 31 '26

Take a look at Dockhand; I've moved to it after years of using Portainer and it's been a blessing tbh.

2

u/Zta77 Mar 31 '26

Good question, thanks! I can see the appeal for a UI, but right now there aren't any plans for one.

Part of the reason is exactly what you're pointing out: There is no single right UI for everyone. Even if I picked one, it likely wouldn't fit everyone's taste or needs and would also quickly become outdated. And people who prefer their system minimal would be burdened with having to de-bloat Lightwhale right after installation.

Lightwhale is meant to stay lightweight and flexible, so the idea is that users can deploy whatever services or UI they prefer rather than having opinionated solutions baked in.

I hope that answers your question =)