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gVisor vs systemd-nspawn

gVisor

gvisor.dev

systemd-nspawn

freedesktop.org

Side by side

FiguregVisorsystemd-nspawn
Price fromFreeFree
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Open source——
LinuxYesYes
Self-hostedYesYes
Plans published11
Spec score · Container Engines8.3 (#6)7.5 (#18)
PurposegVisor is an open-source Linux-compatible sandbox and application kernel that isolates containers from the host operating system.systemd-nspawn runs a command or a full Linux-based operating system in a lightweight namespace container.
SupportThe project directs users to GitHub issues, documentation, and mailing lists for support and community discussion.The systemd project lists its mailing list, IRC channel, and Matrix channel as support options.

Plans

gVisor

  • gVisorFree

gVisor pricing →

systemd-nspawn

  • systemd-nspawnFree

systemd-nspawn pricing →

In their own words

gVisor

gVisor is a free, open-source Linux-compatible sandbox and application kernel for running containers while isolating the host from untrusted code. It is intended for workloads such as user-uploaded, LLM-generated, and third-party code. Instead of passing sandboxed applications’ system calls directly to the host, its Sentry handles them; a Gofer process mediates filesystem access. The project describes a least-privilege design with a restrictive system call filter. It documents use with Docker, Kubernetes, containerd, and OCI runtimes, including Kubernetes configurations using GKE Sandbox, Minikube, or containerd with the gVisor shim. gVisor can stream application trace points to an external threat detection engine such as Falco, and can checkpoint and restore containers. Most CUDA applications can run unmodified in the sandbox with selected NVIDIA driver versions, but GPU support is restricted to certain models, drivers, capabilities, device files, ioctl calls, and platforms. Installation requires Linux 5.6 or later on x86_64 or ARM64. Compatibility is best-effort, and some applications may not work because not every system call, /proc file, or /sys file is implemented. Hardware side-channel protection is generally not provided.

Visit gvisor.dev

systemd-nspawn

systemd-nspawn has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit freedesktop.org