Hi @PackElend Thanks for joining!
Yeah, both are built for containerized workloads with immutability and atomic updates, but they approach it differently.
MicroOS (Server Edition) feels more like a stripped-down openSUSE you can still interact with. RPMs are installable (with a reboot), and it uses transactional-update with Btrfs snapshots for rollbacks. You can use Podman or install Docker if you really want to. It’s flexible enough that you could run apps directly on it or use it as a K8s node.
Flatcar is a lot more locked down. No package manager at all. Everything is done declaratively via Ignition or Butane configs, and it’s really built for large-scale deployments where the host is fully disposable. Updates are done A/B style, and it rolls back automatically if something breaks.
So yeah, they look similar on paper, but MicroOS is better if you want a container-focused OS with some room to tinker.
Flatcar is more opinionated and hands-off. Ideal for cloud-scale setups where you don’t want people SSHing into boxes at all.
Hope that helps.