Top 5 Go linux-distribution Projects

talos

43 5,302 9.7 Go

Talos Linux is a modern Linux distribution built for Kubernetes.

Project mention: There are only 12 binaries in Talos Linux | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-03-04

Super cool. I always enjoy reading about systems that challenge, well, "ossified" assumptions. An OS not providing a shell, for example? Madness! ... or is it genius, if the OS has a specific purpose...? It's thought-provoking, if nothing else.
I'm a bit skeptical of parts. For instance, the "init" binary being less than 400 lines of golang - wow! And sure, main.go [1] is less than 400 lines and very readable. Then you squint at the list of imported packages, or look to the left at the directory list and realize main.go isn't nearly the entire init binary.
That `talosctl list` invocation [2] didn't escape my notice either. Sure, the base OS may have only a handful of binaries - how many of those traditional utilities have been stuffed into the API server? Not that I disagree with the approach! I think every company eventually replaces direct shell access with a daemon like this. It's just that "binary footprint" can get a bit funny if you have a really sophisticated API server sitting somewhere.
[1]: https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/blob/main/internal/app/m...
[2]: https://www.talos.dev/v1.6/reference/cli/#talosctl-list

kairos

21 932 9.7 Go

:penguin: The immutable Linux meta-distribution for edge Kubernetes.

Project mention: K3s – Lightweight Kubernetes | news.ycombinator.com | 2023-10-11

I've been eyeing Kairos [1] which is an OS lifecycle management system for k3s which looks like a nice way to deploy k3s.
[1]: https://github.com/kairos-io/kairos

WorkOS

workos.com sponsored

The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.
darch

4 832 3.2 Go

A tool for building and booting stateless and immutable images, bare metal.
distri

1 531 4.6 Go

a Linux distribution to research fast package management
monogon

4 363 9.4 Go

The Monogon Monorepo. May contain traces of peanuts and a ✨pure Go Linux userland✨. Work in progress!

Project mention: Monogon: A Linux userland in pure Go | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-03-28

It's somewhere in my git stack :).
Until I get to publishing it, the proto/gRPC definitions for node management are a good enough start: https://github.com/monogon-dev/monogon/blob/main/metropolis/...
And the top level API to actually deploy workloads is plain Kubernetes.

InfluxDB

www.influxdata.com sponsored

Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

NOTE: The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars. The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or since we started tracking (Dec 2020).