14 DAY TRIAL // RancherOS developer Sven Dowideit announced the availability of version 0.8.0 of the open-source, container-oriented GNU/Linux operating system built around the popular Docker application container engine.
RancherOS 0.8.0 is here three and a half months after the release of version 0.7.0, and it ships with some of the latest Linux and Docker technologies, including an untouched Linux 4.9.9 kernel, the long-term supported Linux 4.4.43-hypriot-v7 kernel for Raspberry Pi single-board computers, and Docker 1.12.6 installed by default.
The newer Docker 1.13 release is also available, but only for testing purposes, and it looks like the Xfce console is not supported in RancherOS 0.8.0. "Due to the change from Ubuntu kernels to mainline stable Linux kernels, the Xfce console is currently not supported, and upgrading systems that use that console will probably break," said the devs.
The new release of the minimalistic operating system also brings the first ISO images that can be booted without the need of an active network connection, allowing users to install the OS using the installer image found on the ISO. Moreover, RancherOS now uses the source from the OpenZFS project for the ZFS service.
Raspberry Pi builds are coming soon
You can now customize and replace services using cloud-init, Syslinux replaces GRUB as default bootloader (even if you upgrade from a previous version), the way the kernel headers and extras are installed was simplified, dmesg is now used for error and boot logging for better debugging, and many of the boot scripts were rewritten in Go.
Several other small under-the-hood improvements and bug fixes are also present in RancherOS 0.8.0, which should run better in VirtualBox and VMWare virtual machines. Check out the full changelog for all the technical details and download the ISO image for 64-bit platforms from the official website. Raspberry Pi builds are coming soon!