Long term planning (year 2027 onwards)

[olljanat]

⚠️⚠️⚠️ v2.0.5 is potentially last version of BurmillaOS. ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Please, check discussion about potential replacement in here

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It's almost been four years since first Burmilla OS version 1.9.0 was released.
Most important driver for that was allow ex Rancher OS users to update their systems to versions which are still receiving security updates and we have got some new users too.

From GitHub statistics I can see that v2.0.0 ISO file have been downloaded over 600 and v2.0.1 over 500 times.
On top of that many users upgraded from earlier version/Rancher OS which is not visible on those numbers.

What worries me a bit is that Rancher OS v1.5.8 ISO file is still downloaded almost everyday. Docker and Linux kernel versions in it contains known security vulnerabilities so I can only hope that those are non-production systems.

Main components in Burmilla OS 2.0.x versions are:

• Linux kernel 5.10.x which will run of out support in December 2026
• Debian 11 "Bullseye" based console which will run of out support in August 2026

Debian 12 "Bookworm" is using Linux kernel 6.1.x and is supported until June 2028 so most likely that kernel version will be supported also until that same date.

However, before starting implementing new version with those components I would like to confirmation that there is enough of those who are running production workloads on top of Burmilla OS. So please answer to poll below.

[CerberusZ]

This is an amazing project and I really hope you continue supporting it.

[olljanat]

This is an amazing project

True but that does not mean that some other distro cannot be equally good or even better.
Opened discussion to #190 about one alternative.

[benok]

As v2.0.2 is released, I think this vote should be extended.
Only a few beta users voted.

[olljanat]

Keeping mind those schedules mentioned in first message, I think that this voting can be considered to be open somewhere like June 2026 so there is plenty of time also those who do not update that often to see info message.

And people still can report issues or create feature requests and I will check those case by case.

[olljanat]

Because main challenge here is kernel, one alternative which I have been thinking lately would be using kernel binaries from Debian.

However, my first merge request to Debian isn’t looking too promising at the moment so fixing bugs might be tricky if we found any.

[pwFoo]

It would be easy to move to os like rocky, alma or similiar... but I loved to use such a special docker os like rancheros / burmillaos. Running and updating it since one early rancheros release...

Played around with linuxkit base to build an minimal docker os myself, but some important parts like os updates, ssh to host, ... are tricky.
Anyone building / playing around with such a fun os build? Would be interested to take a look into...

[olljanat]

Yeah well BurmillaOS maintenance also quite easy and there is no that much to do after major release is ready and published. It is just these larger jumps in kernel versions and potentially needed refactoring for existing code (which are explained in open issues) which needs extra effort and would benefit from contributions…

[olljanat]

some important parts like os updates, ssh to host, ... are tricky

You might want to try new prototype in here.

It is based on framework which Rancher/SUSE uses nowadays to build minimal disk images for Kubernetes. Those are based on OpenSUSE but they made framework generic enough that it can be used with any distro.

So my thinking is that BurmillaOS v3 would be simply repo which automatically build and publish new disk image when new Docker version is released (based on Debian or Ubuntu) and those who needs customization can then simply fork that repo (or just use cloud-init if that is enough for you).

[olljanat]

I see that someone is running Nomad in production with BurmillaOS.

Can I ask a bit more details about that setup? Example to #6 or as separate issue/discussion

[mdef]

@olljanat We use burmilla as a docker server - for local services (docker-compose) and kubernetes which is also running as docker container.
We manage ~10 such installations and burmilla has been drop-in replacement for rancher. where Rancher was replacement for CoreOS.
Still hope for future releases.

[olljanat]

@mdef Can I ask that how you run Kubernetes as docker containers?

Still hope for future releases.

I know that many is hoping same but it is getting harder because Docker switched to faster release cycle and there is more breaking changes now and more like #195 (comment) is coming which would need major changes to BurmillaOS.

However, I now created new automation which allow us build Docker 25.0.x binaries and added Docker v25.0.14 to BurmillaOS which might be optimal choice for those who just want stable environment to run containers and do not need new features (and I still took docker compose and buildx from Docker 29.0.1 so new features included to those should still works).

Would be interesting to hear if that works for your and others use cases? Because if that does then I potentially would prefer to switch BurmillaOS defaulting to those Docker 25.0.x versions in next release.

[mdef]

@olljanat I'm using official compose from k3s

[prologic]

Can we perhaps potentially think of it handing over maintenance of this project as I still actively use BurmilaOS so I would want to see its existence continued!

[olljanat]

@prologic Absolutely. I have been hoping that someone will do that offer.

Most logical point to do hand over would be version 3.0.0. I can still help with that but you would take lead of it.
Created project of it and basically you can start working on those by creating pull requests against of master branch in relevant repos.

Items in "Todo" column are ones which at least would need to be included.
Items in "No Status" can be considered but they are not mandatory to keep this project alive.