LXC VS Docker Compose

Compare LXC vs Docker Compose and see what are their differences.

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LXC Docker Compose
7 388
4,439 32,367
1.4% 1.4%
9.2 9.6
21 days ago 5 days ago
C Go
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

LXC

Posts with mentions or reviews of LXC. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-06.
  • LXD Moves into Canonical
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Jul 2023
    I hope this doesn't affect LXC negatively.

    LXC and LXD share plenty of contributors.

    https://github.com/lxc/lxc/graphs/contributors

    https://github.com/canonical/lxd/graphs/contributors

    I use an "unprivileged LXC container" setup on several Debian bullseye hosts. It works fantastic, and each LXC container feels like a real server.

    Compare that to Docker's "one-container-one-process" philosophy, reinventing the wheel by awkwardly composing multiple containers.

  • Support for Android apps
    2 projects | /r/vanillaos | 2 May 2023
    There is an issue with lxc as stated here: https://github.com/lxc/lxc/issues/4283 and https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/apx/issues/118
  • LXC & AD
    1 project | /r/Proxmox | 17 Oct 2022
    I'm currently attempting to enroll my Ubuntu (20.04) (Unprivileged) LXC hosts to my windows AD server but am having difficulty. I'm using SSSD and KRB5 to manage the user directory and authentication. Once joining the domain with realmd, all seems ok, I can use the id command, etc to lookup users and groups and the host appears in Windows Users and Computers. The issue I'm having is with authentication, I believe it to be related to this issue however I don't entirely understand the solution and can't seem to find much else on the matter (Note the method I'm using works fine on full VMs). Would anybody please be able to provide more clarity in layman's terms?
  • LXC and LXD: a different container story
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Sep 2022
    I don't recall having to do any uid/gid fixup last time I made an unprivileged container. I did have to prepare the unprivileged host user, of course, by reserving a range of subordinate uids/gids (/etc/sub?id) and configuring a virtual network interface limit (/etc/lxc/lxc-usernet).

    To create the container, I did this:

    lxc-create -t download -n -- -d debian -r bullseye -a amd64

    Note that this runs the 'download' template, which (IIRC) is better suited to unprivileged containers than the 'debian' template is. The 'download' template will list its available distros if you do this:

    lxc-create -t download -n -- --list

    Note that some versions of lxc-create may fail with a keyserver error because sks-keyservers.net died somewhat recently. Workaround: DOWNLOAD_KEYSERVER=hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com lxc-create

    https://github.com/lxc/lxc/issues/3894

  • Lxc container still gives Cannot open TUN/TAP dev /dev/net/tun: Operation not permitted after following graysky's edit of wiki
    1 project | /r/archlinux | 1 Jan 2022
    Found this issue and edited the config file of the lxc container:
  • How to - Create LXC containers FROM Docker and OCI images
    2 projects | /r/LXD | 6 Nov 2021
    and on this thread... an different approach is described
  • Finally joining the club
    1 project | /r/Proxmox | 17 Mar 2021
    https://github.com/lxc/lxc/issues/1629#issuecomment-311379508

Docker Compose

Posts with mentions or reviews of Docker Compose. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-26.
  • Docker Compose: `version` is obsolete
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Apr 2024
  • 12 Factor: 13 years later
    3 projects | dev.to | 26 Apr 2024
    Solutions are many, and could include Docker Compose, VS Code dev containers, Telepresence, Localstack or setting up temporary AWS accounts as a development environment for serverless applications.
  • Let's write a simple microservice in Clojure
    7 projects | dev.to | 26 Apr 2024
    Using Docker Compose to run Postgres and any third-party services locally provides a streamlined and consistent development environment. Developers can define services in a docker-compose.yml file, which enables them to configure and launch an entire stack with a single command. In this case, Postgres is encapsulated within a container with predefined configurations. Docker Compose also facilitates easy scaling, updates, and isolation of services, enhancing development efficiency and reducing the setup time for new team members or transitioning between projects. It encapsulates complex configurations, such as Postgres' performance monitoring and logging settings, in a manageable, version-controlled file, simplifying and replicating the service setup across different environments.
  • Live reload em Go com docker e compile daemon
    4 projects | dev.to | 25 Apr 2024
  • Docker compose, orchestrating and automating services
    3 projects | dev.to | 21 Apr 2024
    “Compose simplifies the control of your entire application stack, making it easy to manage services, networks, and volumes in a single, comprehensible YAML configuration file. Then, with a single command, you create and start all the services from your configuration file.” - Docker documentation
  • Hosting a simple docker-compose app with Nginx and generate a SSL with certbot on digitalocean droplet
    2 projects | dev.to | 8 Apr 2024
    curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh sudo sh get-docker.sh # Install docker compose sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose # Apply executable permissions to the binary sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose # Run Project docker-compose up -d
  • One Minute: Compose
    4 projects | dev.to | 30 Mar 2024
    Docker,
  • How to Set Up a Docker Container
    3 projects | dev.to | 13 Mar 2024
    This foundation now opens the door to even more powerful concepts. You can explore more advanced concepts such as container networking, streamlining the management of complex applications with Docker Compose, and how to make your application data persistent using volumes.
  • Use same Dockerfile for Dev & Production
    1 project | dev.to | 8 Feb 2024
    In many projects that are containerized, especially in cases where development is also done locally with docker-compose, teams often have two Dockerfiles, 1 for Development, the other for Production. If you happen to have multiple environments like pre-prod, staging and so on, some teams could have different Dockerfiles for these environments.
  • How to Dockerise a NodeJS - TypeScript API || A Comprehensive Guide from Environment Setup to Deployment with a CI/CD Pipeline
    5 projects | dev.to | 18 Jan 2024
    sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

What are some alternatives?

When comparing LXC and Docker Compose you can also consider the following projects:

Portainer - Making Docker and Kubernetes management easy.

supervisor - Supervisor process control system for Unix (supervisord)

Docker Swarm - Source repo for Docker's Documentation

LibreNMS-docker - LibreNMS Docker image

Docker - Notary is a project that allows anyone to have trust over arbitrary collections of data

terraform - Terraform enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure. It is a source-available tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned.

Dokku - A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications

Harbor - An open source trusted cloud native registry project that stores, signs, and scans content.

Cloud-Init - unofficial mirror of Ubuntu's cloud-init

Habitus - A build flow tool for Docker.

k3s - Lightweight Kubernetes