LXD stands for “Linux Container Daemon” and, unlike Docker, is a tool for operating system containers and virtual machines. It was developed at Canonical and, like Docker initially, is based on LXC, a Linux container runtime that made its way into the kernel in 2008. LXD 5.0 LTS has just been released and will be supported for five years.
New minimum requirements
LXD 5.0 LTS brings improvements across the range of use cases, whether it’s running containers and VMs on a laptop or running a variety of projects in a server cluster. The minimum requirements for the required software have increased slightly:
- Kernel: 5.4
- Go: 1.18
- LXC: 4.0.x
- QEMU: 6.0
Network functions upgraded
LXD 5.0 brings networking support for OVN (Open Virtual Network), an open source virtual network Open vSwitch deeply integrated into the Linux kernel This opens up networking features for LXD, such as multiple virtual networks within projects, avoiding conflicts when multiple users are using the same LXD server. It also increases speed with network acceleration and peering. To improve security, LXD network features now include ACL (Access Control List), a feature that allows inbound and outbound traffic to be restricted through fine-grained access control.
VMs are equivalent to containers
With LXD 5.0, LXD virtual machines are practically equal to containers. They now have vTPM support and enable security-related functions such as creating and storing private keys that authenticate access to systems. VMs also have PCI passthrough support, allowing users to access and manage a variety of hardware devices from within a virtual machine. VMs can also now be live migrated and support some device hotplug and additional storage options.
The changes to LXD 5.0 can be read in detail in the changelog . LXD 5.0 is included in Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server 22.04 as a snap and can be easily post-installed for the desktop version .
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