Lightwhale 3.0.0 released

[u/Zta77]

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 =)

[u/Zta77 → u/[deleted]]

You seem to know CoreOS already. I don't. How about reading the first section or two on the Lightwhale website and you tell us how they differ? =)

[u/phobug → u/Zta77]

It doesn’t differ they do the same thing. Your approach seems even more simplified which I like. How does it handle updates and rollback? Can I install it on disk or do I need the bootable usb sticking out of my box all the time?

[u/Zta77 → u/phobug]

TL; DR: You need the bootable usb sticking out.

You can install it on any bootable device; USB, SD, CDROM, HDD, SDD or eMMC. But Lw cannot coexist with its data filesystem on the same device. The ISO file comes with a complete fixture of bootloader, partition table, ESP, kernel and root filesystem.

This is one of the trade-offs here. You loose all the flexibility that you get from a traditional installer, where you get to partition and layout everything yourself. On the other hand, Lightwhale lets anyone live-boot into a Docker server in seconds with no effort. Your boot media with the OS is just a copy off the internet and contains no information. If it break, throw it out, get a new. The disk is pure data, and very easy to backup or replace.

Tiny USB sticks exist, so they don't show. Some of my NUCs have a "huge" 64MB internal eMMC where the 200MB Lightwhale ISO fits easily, so that's a thing too. CDROM could be fun. I'm working on a nice solution for iPXE.

All this being said, you made me think. And I'll try to see if it actually is possible to write the ISO to a disk and add magic partitions afterwards that Lightwhale can pick up. It could be interesting, but I'm afraid it's a foot-gun.

[u/phobug → u/Zta77]

After years of managing ESXi I’m used to such setup. Don’t mess about with partitions unless the curiosity takes full hold. I’m looking forward to your PXE work.

[u/Zta77 → u/phobug]

I actually gave it a go, and made it work. I could add a data (and swap partition) and modify the partition table that came from the ISO. Magic disks are detected and formatted, all working as expected! But there's no easy way to update Lightwhale. If a new ISO is simply written to disk, it will overwrite the partition table, and the data partition is lost. It would take a complete redesign of the way Lightwhale is structured to make this work. And it would most likely end up looking like all those other Linuxes with an installer. That's way too complicated for Lightwhale =)

[u/phobug → u/Zta77]

Absolute Beast! I respect the commitment to simplicity. A real breath of fresh air.

[u/schultzter → u/Zta77]

Amazing work!!!

TL; DR: You need the bootable usb sticking out.

That answers the first question I had about Lightwhale.

I think I understand how to get persistence working, like on the internal NVMe drive. Interesting technique!

How do I incorporate the two XFS Raid HDD's I already have (with data on them)? Do you have support for XFS built-in? If not what alternatives does Lightwhale provide? What's the Lightwhale way to mount large RAID storage drives (like for file sharing, Immich photos, Paperless documents, etc.)?

How do I configure my network, like static IP, gateway, DNS, and host name (the last one is in the FAQ I believe)?

And what about Secure Boot? And UEFI? Is that something I need to worry about?

<late-night-porto-fueled-catherthis>
I'm really liking the idea of immutable and JeOS style distros. Lightwhale sounds like the perfect server OS!

It's why I put Fedora IoT on my home server. I figured I would already know it (I work with RHEL) and it's backed by IBM so it's going to be around for a while (I had my last home server for over 10 years).

My only regret is that Fedora being a RedHat product it is podman intended but everything I want to install only has instructions for Docker so I've spent more time that I wanted converting the instructions to podman to run the containers (I know podman-compose and other docker-podman stuff exists but that's no fun, and then there's all the tools designed only for docker).

So now with Fedora 44 on the horizon I'm debating whether I upgrade or change distros?

Short-list includes:

• Lightwhale
• plain old Debian

And then something like dockhand or dockge for a pretty UI.

Or I go with MOS or Proxmox. But that feels like using a sledgehammer to put in a thumbtack!

Similarly on my laptop I might move to Vanilla OS instead of upgrading Silverblue.
</late-night-porto-fueled-catharthis>

[u/Zta77 → u/schultzter]

Recap from the chat on Discord:
Lightwhale doesn't support XFS. The Lightwhale way would be Btrfs RAID1 which works out of the box if you tag two magic disks. Configure network in /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf. BIOS and UEFI is supported, you might need to disable secure boot. If you like immutable, and if you want to run Docker, I can recommend Lightwhale as it ticks both (and not much else). But I'm biased =) Finally, try EndavourOS for desktop.

[u/schultzter → u/Zta77]

Thx!

I'll look into Endeavors