The landscape of Linux operating system deployment is transforming with bootc (bootable container) and its integration into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Image Mode. This innovative technology offers a modern, opinionated approach to deploying, configuring, and managing immutable, image-based Linux systems by extending familiar container practices to the entire OS. Whether deployed in a data center, on bare metal, at the edge, or in the cloud, bootc fundamentally shifts how we manage operating systems.
What is bootc?
At its core, bootc is a command-line interface (CLI) tool complemented by systemd services and configuration that orchestrate bootable containers. Its primary function is to provide transactional, in-place operating system updates using container images. Updates are atomic: they either complete successfully or can be reverted cleanly, minimizing system corruption or downtime.
bootc systems are built on the principle of an immutable operating system. Once deployed, most directories are mounted read-only, with /etc (for machine-local configuration) and /var (for persistent, mutable data) as exceptions. This design provides the robust benefits of immutability for the core OS (/usr), ensuring predictable updates and rollbacks, while retaining the necessary flexibility for machine-specific configurations and dynamic data.
A key differentiator for bootc images is their comprehensive nature: they include essential OS components such as the Linux kernel, firmware, and bootloader, typically absent in standard application container images.
Why bootc?
The adoption of bootc brings significant advantages to OS management:
- Simplified Upgrades & Rollbacks: bootc systems perform time-based atomic updates by default via a systemd timer. Updates either complete successfully or revert cleanly, ensuring fast and reliable rollbacks.
- DevOps-Ready: RHEL Image Mode, powered by bootc, merges the consistency and agility of container images with the full power of a traditional Linux OS. System definitions are in a Containerfile, built into a full bootable disk image, and deployed as a single, consistent unit.
- Operational Consistency: Deploying all systems from the same image drastically reduces configuration drift, ensuring a uniform, secure, and compliant environment.
- Scalability for Edge & Fleets: Designed for scale, bootc supports automatic updates and centralized management, making it an excellent choice for large-scale or distributed deployments, especially in edge computing.
- Simplified Security: bootc allows leveraging container security advancements—like patching, scanning, validation, and signing—and applying them to the entire OS stack, including the kernel, drivers, and bootloader.
- Speed & Ecosystem Integration: bootc seamlessly integrates into the vast ecosystem of tools and technologies around containers, enabling organizations to build, deploy, and manage Linux systems at scale and speed.
bootc's Open Source and Community-Driven Innovation
A pivotal moment for bootc was its acceptance into the CNCF Sandbox maturity level on January 21, 2025. This signifies the commitment to open source principles and provides an "explicitly vendor-neutral home" for the project. While Red Hat has invested heavily, the donation to CNCF underscores a goal for neutral evolution, attracting a diverse range of contributions and ensuring long-term viability. This strategic openness builds profound confidence in the technology's future, independent of any single corporate entity.
The bootc project operates under a governance model embracing openness, fairness, community priority, inclusivity, and participation. All communication and decision-making occur in public forums and open repositories. Maintainers, who form the "Maintainer Council," demonstrate sustained commitment through active participation and contributions. The project adheres to the CNCF Community Code of Conduct, fostering a welcoming environment.
For engagement, use the GitHub discussion forum for asynchronous talks or the #bootc-dev channel on CNCF Slack for real-time chat and weekly video calls also provide regular interaction, with many developers from the related Fedora/CentOS bootc project participating.
Fedora: The Upstream Engine of bootc Development
The Fedora Project operates on an "upstream first" principle, contributing improvements directly to the original source software. This ensures all users benefit and reduces maintenance burdens across the open-source ecosystem.
Fedora bootc is a dedicated Fedora project focused on building Fedora and CentOS-based bootable containers, serving as a proving ground for bootc's core technologies. Notably, Fedora CoreOS acts as the freely available, community-driven upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHEL CoreOS). The strategic goal is for Fedora CoreOS to eventually build directly on top of Fedora bootc, aligning the technical stack and ecosystem.
This "upstream first" approach establishes a powerful feedback loop. Innovations and testing within Fedora directly feed into the bootc project, which then forms the robust foundation for RHEL Image Mode. This symbiotic relationship ensures bootc benefits from widespread community testing and diverse use cases before being hardened for enterprise-grade RHEL.
The Growing bootc Ecosystem: Projects Building on Innovation
The bootc CLI is designed to be operating system and distribution-agnostic. It builds upon mature technologies like ostree (in active development for over 13 years) and rpm-ostree. bootc is envisioned as the successor to ostree, aiming to seamlessly carry forward its existing user base and proven stability.
Here are some prominent open-source projects consuming bootc or contributing to its ecosystem:
- Flightctl: An open-source, lightweight device management solution designed for edge deployments. flightctl leverages bootc to manage and update the operating systems of large fleets of devices, ensuring consistent and secure operations at scale. It focuses on declarative device enrollment and configuration, making it ideal for IoT and edge use cases where reliable and automated OS updates are critical.
- Universal Blue: A community-driven project creating exceptional desktop and server OS images through automation. It produces diverse, continuously delivered OS images using bootc. Key products include:
- Aurora: A clean KDE Plasma 6 desktop OS with zero maintenance via automatic updates.
- Bazzite: The "next generation of Linux Gaming" OS, pre-installed with Steam and Lutris, and optimized for gaming devices. Bazzite specifically uses bootc to manage its base image, ensuring stability and reliability.
- Bluefin: Tailored for developers, offering a container-focused workflow with tools like Ptyxis terminal and Distroshelf.
Universal Blue's extensive adoption, especially in gaming (Bazzite), validates bootc's inherent flexibility.
- Podman Desktop: This popular application now includes a dedicated bootc extension for easily building and converting bootc images locally, and launching them as virtual machines.
- bootc-image-builder: A powerful tool converting bootc container images into bootable disk formats (QCOW2, ISO, VHD), compatible with major hyperscalers and virtualization platforms.
This diverse ecosystem underscores that bootc is a foundational technology enabling a much broader set of tools and platforms.
Why Contribute to bootc? Your Impact on the Future of Linux
Contributing to bootc offers the opportunity to shape the future of OS deployment and management. bootc represents a "natural progression" in container image utilization, paving the way for GitOps workflows directly into the operating system's composition. By contributing, you actively participate in and influence this paradigm shift.
You'll work with cutting-edge technology. The bootc project is primarily implemented in Rust, a modern systems programming language, and integrates with components in Go and C. This offers opportunities to apply cloud-native patterns at the OS level.
Join the community. The bootc project's governance explicitly emphasizes openness, inclusivity, and active participation. Contributions have a direct and significant impact, influencing a technology that powers Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Mode and is adopted by a rapidly growing ecosystem. While coding skills (Rust, Go, C) are valuable, the open-source philosophy welcomes contributions to documentation, translation, QA testing, and community management.
How to Get Involved: A Guide for New Contributors
For those eager to contribute, the CONTRIBUTING.md guide on the bootc GitHub repository is the authoritative resource. We strongly encourage prospective contributors to join the GitHub discussion forum or the #bootc-dev channel on CNCF Slack. For larger proposed changes, early discussion before submitting a pull request is highly recommended. Look for issues tagged as "first-timer issues" or "good first issues" on the GitHub repository to get started.
Setting up a development environment is key. bootc developers typically use Linux hosts and test within Linux VMs. A recommended approach involves using toolbox to create a containerized development environment. An installation of podman-bootc is a key prerequisite for local development and testing. The project provides clear guidance on building local binaries into a bootc container image and then spawning a VM from that image for testing. This container-centric workflow significantly lowers the barrier to entry, making it easier for developers familiar with container tooling to transition to OS-level development.
Looking Ahead: The Vision for bootc's Evolution
The future direction of bootc focuses on expanding capabilities and deepening its integration within the cloud-native ecosystem. A core strategic goal is to expand support for a wider array of operating systems beyond Fedora and RHEL, aiming for a truly universal immutable OS management solution. The project also has aspirations for deeper integrations with the Kubernetes ecosystem, including update orchestrators and tighter coupling with Cluster API. The potential for simplifying provisioning and scaling lightweight Kubernetes (K3s) clusters using bootc is actively being explored.
Conclusion: Join the bootc Revolution
bootc is fundamentally transforming how Linux operating systems are built, deployed, and managed, bringing the consistency, automation, and security of containerization to the entire OS stack. It offers a robust, reliable, and scalable foundation for modern deployments. This technology is not just a Red Hat initiative; it is a truly open-source, community-driven project, growing and innovating rapidly thanks to global contributions. Its acceptance into the CNCF Sandbox, its deep roots in Fedora's "upstream first" model, and its growing adoption across projects like Universal Blue - Bazzite all highlight its collaborative spirit and broad applicability.
We encourage you to explore the documentation, join the community channels on GitHub, Slack: #bootc-dev and contribute your expertise to shape the future of bootable containers. Every contribution—code, documentation, bug reports, or feedback—plays a key role in advancing this technology. Join us in building the next generation of Linux operating systems!
