Fedora Project Podcast - Episodes Tagged with “Containers”

62: What is Fedora Hummingbird Linux?

Fedora Project — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0500

Red Hat announced Hummingbird at Summit back in May. Five months later there are Hummingbird containers in the wild, a spin of Fedora Linux built on the same principles, and a full Bluefin ISO built on top of it.

Scott McCarty is a senior principal product manager at Red Hat who kicked off Podman with the team and launched Red Hat Universal Base Image. Jorge Castro runs Project Bluefin and was last on the show back when it was still rpm-ostree. Noah is out this week, so Eric flies solo.

We get into:

Two things launched at Summit, not one. Red Hat hardened images went generally available and Fedora Hummingbird Linux was announced, and they are not the same thing
The real difference between them, which comes down to whether there is a kernel in it. A container image will never boot. Add a kernel and it becomes a bootable container
Roughly 95 percent of Hummingbird comes from Fedora Rawhide, with the rest pulled from the major releases or run ahead of Fedora when something lands upstream first
Why patching speed suddenly matters, and Scott walking through time to exploit collapsing from two and a half years and a seven person team down to days for one person
Risk based versus compliance based patching, and why Scott will not call any of this more secure, only different
Utah Raptor, which Jorge built the first cut of in a bar on a dare, and what it took 13 people 22 days to turn into a shippable Bluefin
What it actually takes to point an existing bootc home lab at Hummingbird, which turns out to be a pointer change

Scott and Jorge both close with the same ask: tell them what you would actually use this for. The Fedora discussion threads are open, and there is a thread for every episode of this show.

Special Guests: Jorge Castro and Scott McCarty.

Links:

54: BootC in the Wild

Fedora Project — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0500

What does bootc look like when it's actually running in production, not just in a lab? James Harmison joins the Fedora Podcast to talk about building custom bootc images across wildly different contexts: NVIDIA drivers, AGX Orin hardware with custom kernel RPMs, replacing RHCOS images in OpenShift, and even a stripped-down SteamOS-style couch gaming rig. We also get into his contributions to the Chunkah project and the real-world UX conversations shaping where bootc goes next.

The Fedora Podcast brings you exclusive interviews and deep dives with the innovators and contributors who make the Fedora community amazing! From cutting-edge technologies to the production of the Fedora distribution itself, we chat with the minds behind it all. Whether you're a longtime user or just curious, there’s always something new to discover in the world of Fedora.

🎬 New to Fedora? Get Started Here: https://fedoraproject.org/
🎙️ Follow the Fedora Podcast: https://podcast.fedoraproject.org
💬 Join the Conversation: https://matrix.to/#/#podcast:fedoraproject.org
🌐 Become Part of the Fedora community: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/join/
📱 Connect with Eric "the IT Guy" Hendricks: https://linktr.ee/itguyeric
📱 Connect with Noah Chelliah (Kernellinux): https://noahc.us/about

🔗 Episode Resources
Project Website: https://bootc.dev
Bootc upstream: https://github.com/containers/bootc
Fedora bootc docs: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc
Bootc Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#bootc:fedoraproject.org

🔖 Chapters
00:00 Stream start
01:41 Introduction
05:27 What is bootc?
12:21 James' operations
20:40 Use cases
28:00 Chunkah
33:04 Getting involved

Special Guest: James Harmison.

36: The Next Generation of Linux with bootc

Fedora Project — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 10:30:00 -0500

As the popularity of atomic and immutable Linux distros grows, how does Fedora take things to the next level? Short answer: bootc. By learning from containers and cloud native practices that have become standard in the server side Linux world, bootc aims to take things image-based and make the desktop easier to manage for Fedora, downstream projects, and anyone else who wants to make custom images!

The Fedora Podcast brings you exclusive interviews and deep dives with the innovators and contributors who make the Fedora community amazing! From cutting-edge technologies to the production of the Fedora distro itself, we chat with the minds behind it all. Whether you're a longtime user or just curious, there’s always something new to discover in the world of Fedora.

🎬 New to Fedora? Get Started Here: https://fedoraproject.org/
🎙️ Follow the Fedora Podcast: https://podcast.fedoraproject.org/ 💬 Join the Conversation: https://matrix.to/#/#podcast:fedoraproject.org
🌐 Become Part of the Fedora community: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/join/
📱 Connect with Eric "the IT Guy" Hendricks: https://linktr.ee/itguyeric

🔗Episode Resources
Getting Started Guide: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc/getting-started/
Bootc documentation: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc/
Bootc initiative tickets: https://gitlab.com/groups/fedora/bootc/-/issues
Universal Blue: https://universal-blue.org/
Live Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buY3keP97Jc

Releated talks from DevConf.cz 2024
Keynote: What if you could boot a container?
https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/AVSUU3/

Customize your operating system like a container or start a new project without building a new distribution
https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/SKSFGA/

Streamlining bootable container workflows with podman-bootc
https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/RNDTRV/

🔖 Chapters
00:00 Stream start
01:15 Meet Timothèe
03:55 Introducing BootC
15:01 Building with bootc
24:53 Red Hat and bootc
28:01 Contributions and Q&A
45:03 Closing thoughts

Special Guest: Timothée Ravier.