Mkosi – Build Bespoke OS Images
11 comments
·July 16, 2025NewJazz
I've been meaning to try this other tool
jordemort
I've been having great success with this one at my day job. Being able to apply all the container workflows to VM images has been a boon.
miladyincontrol
Yeah, systemd's particleOS relies on it. Pretty neat stuff
mring33621
What's the use-case for this?
mhitza
Most likely context I'm going to try it is in a systemd-nspawn context. Lightweight process namespace ("containers") closer to the native modern linux server runtime (systemd all the way).
its-summertime
one image to deploy mostly without additional tooling on any systemd-based OS (which mounts the image and integrates the units from it), on a VM (just use it), or on bare metal (probably needs to be built on a full image but still can just use it assuming that is the case).
pmarreck
is this another case of "something that nix already definitively solves, but for the rest of us"?
Does seem to support cross-architecture image building, which is a feature that's kept me on Debian's multistrap and now mmdebstrap.
I should give this a go!
The README's reference page has some good write-ups et cetera! There's a good "re-introduction" on Lennart (creator of systemd, mkosi) site, from the current maintainer.
https://github.com/systemd/mkosi?tab=readme-ov-file#referenc... https://0pointer.net/blog/a-re-introduction-to-mkosi-a-tool-...