Buildah vs LXC

Buildah is a free command-line tool for building OCI container images on Linux. It can create images from working containers, Dockerfiles, or Containerfiles, and can also build through commands and scripts without a build file. Output can use OCI format or the traditional upstream Docker image format. Builds can run without root privileges, and Buildah follows a fork-exec model rather than running as a daemon. Its commands create, mount, unmount, delete, and rename working containers, as well as create or delete images; users can also pull images from a specified location and push local images elsewhere. Buildah is based on a Go API that other tools can vendor, and Podman uses it for Dockerfile builds while remaining independently installable. Buildah requires a kernel with OverlayFS or fuse-overlayfs support; RHEL or CentOS requires version 7.4 or later. Installation guidance warns that short image names can be spoofed and recommends fully qualified names from trusted registries or pulling by digest. The project points users to tutorials, releases, and a mailing list for questions.

LXC is free software for creating and managing Linux system or application containers through Linux kernel containment features. It aims to make each container resemble a standard Linux installation without a separate kernel. The project includes the liblxc library, container control tools, distribution templates and API bindings for Python 3, Lua, Go, Ruby and Haskell. Process containment uses kernel namespaces, AppArmor and SELinux profiles, seccomp policies, chroots, kernel capabilities and cgroups. Unprivileged containers map container root to an unprivileged host user. LXC is included in most Linux distributions and is generally installed through the distribution package manager. Listed requirements include a supported C library and Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later. LXC 7.0 and 6.0 are listed as long-term support releases through June 1, 2031 and June 1, 2029. Most code uses GNU LGPLv2.1+, with some BSD 2-clause or GNU GPLv2 components.