Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager that provides unified management of full Linux systems in containers or virtual machines at scale from single machines to data center clusters.
Incus solves the problem of efficiently running and managing diverse workloads by offering a unified REST API-driven platform for both containerized and virtualized environments. It supports images for numerous Linux distributions and abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure management, allowing operators to treat their systems like a private cloud while maintaining resource efficiency. The tool scales seamlessly from development setups on a single machine to production deployments across clustered infrastructure.
You should adopt Incus if you need to containerize different environments, run virtual machines, or manage infrastructure cost-effectively. It suits both development and production workloads. The project originated as a community fork of LXD following Canonical's shift in stewardship, and it has been adopted by the Linux Containers community as a true open source alternative maintained by the original LXD development team.
The project maintains active continuous integration with automated testing on every push to the main branch. Development follows a structured release process with announcements and versioned release tarballs published through official channels. The codebase receives ongoing static analysis and maintains Go documentation standards. Translation efforts are actively managed through a dedicated platform, indicating sustained attention to internationalization and accessibility across the user base.
