Today VMware released Photon 4 beta, which is a lightweight Linux operating system for cloud native applications. Photon is optimized for vSphere which should help you easily run modern applications. I really like the small footprint and support for popular Linux container formats like Docker and rkt.
Kishan Malur writes on the VMware vSphere Blog:
Photon OS team at VMware is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Photon 4.0. Photon 4.0 builds upon the innovation of our enterprise class, Open Source virtual appliance OS, which can be found powering thousands of deployments the field. With exciting improvements to the 3.0 rev 2 release, Photon 4.0 comes with new features and capabilities, and important updates including upgrades to kernel 5.9, glibc 2.32, system 245, etc.
I have not had any experience with Photon OS yet, but I do plan on downloading the beta and getting my feet wet. I am keen on the performance improvements for vSphere with Tanzu. I’d like to see the differences in the runtime.
I also like the fact that Photon OS is opensource and you can help contribute to its development and success. If you are not a coder you can always help contribute with documentation updates. There is always a way to get involved, you just have to find it.
Do you use or run Photon OS in production? Do you plan on giving Photon OS 4 a try? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading.