Talos OS

What is Talos OS?

Talos Linux is a Linux distribution designed specifically for Kubernetes, offering a secure, immutable, and minimal platform for running and managing Kubernetes clusters across various environments, including cloud, virtual, bare-metal, and edge devices. With Talos Linux, users can launch a Kubernetes cluster on their laptop inside Docker in just 3 minutes, providing a seamless and efficient way to work with Kubernetes

Highlights

• Security: Talos Linux reduces the attack surface by being minimal, hardened, and immutable. All API access is secured with mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication, ensuring a secure environment for Kubernetes deployments
• Predictability: Talos Linux eliminates configuration drift and reduces unknown factors by employing an immutable infrastructure ideology, delivering atomic updates for a consistent and reliable platform
• Evolvability: Talos Linux simplifies the architecture, increases agility, and always delivers the latest stable versions of Kubernetes and Linux, keeping the platform up-to-date and flexible
• Minimalism: Talos Linux consists of only a handful of binaries and shared libraries, just enough to run containerd and a small set of system services, aligning with NIST's recommendations for application container security
• Immutability: Talos Linux mounts the root file system as read-only and removes any host-level facilities, such as a shell and SSH, further improving security by preventing configuration drift and ensuring a consistent and reliable environment
• Ephemeral: Talos Linux runs in memory from a SquashFS, and persists nothing, leaving the primary disk entirely to Kubernetes, providing a clean and isolated environment for Kubernetes workloads.