bootc
also: boot containers
bootc is a container-native operating system tool that treats Linux systems as container images, enabling atomic updates and reproducible deployments by storing the entire OS as an OCI container.
bootc (boot containers) is a modern approach to Linux system management that containerizes the entire operating system. Instead of managing individual packages, bootc treats your whole Linux system—kernel, userspace, and all—as a versioned OCI container image stored in a registry.
This enables atomic updates: you pull a new OS container image and reboot, with automatic rollback if the system fails to boot. It simplifies reproducibility since you can version and test complete OS configurations before deployment.
Example: rather than running apt update && apt upgrade on a server, you'd build a new container image with your OS updates, push it to a registry, then run bootc switch on the host to atomically update to that image. This is particularly useful for Fedora CoreOS, CentOS Stream, and RHEL systems.