+++ title = "Talos Linux" +++ {{< blocks/cover title="Talos Linux" image_anchor="top" color="orange" >}}

### The Kubernetes Operating System

{{< /blocks/cover >}}

# What is Talos Linux?

Talos Linux is Linux designed for Kubernetes – secure, immutable, and minimal.

- Supports cloud platforms, bare metal, and virtualization platforms
- All system management is done via an API. No SSH, shell or console
- Production ready: supports some of the largest Kubernetes clusters in the world
- Open source project from the team at Sidero Labs

It only takes 3 minutes to launch a Talos cluster on your laptop inside Docker.

Try it now

## Why Talos Linux?

### Security

Talos reduces your attack surface. It's minimal, hardened and immutable. All API access is secured with mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication.

### Predictability

Talos eliminates configuration drift, reduces unknown factors by employing immutable infrastructure ideology, and delivers atomic updates.

### Evolvability

Talos simplifies your architecture, increases your agility, and always delivers current stable Kubernetes and Linux versions.

## Features

### Minimal

Talos consists of only a handful of binaries and shared libraries: just enough to run containerd and a small set of system services.

This aligns with NIST's recommendation in the Application Container Security Guide.

### Hardened

Hardened by design:

- Built with the Kernel Self Protection Project configuration recommendations.
- All access to the API is secured with Mutual TLS.
- Settings and configuration described in the CIS guidelines are applied by default.

### Immutable

Talos improves security further by mounting the root filesystem as read-only and removing any host-level such as a shell and SSH.

### Ephemeral

Talos runs in memory from a SquashFS, and persists nothing, leaving the primary disk entirely to Kubernetes.

### Current

Delivers the latest stable versions of Kubernetes and Linux.

We are a Cloud Native Computing Foundation member.