{"slug": "talos", "name": "Talos", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 7, "warners": 1, "score": 2.764, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2026-07-01", "latest": "2026-10-17", "why": "But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal.", "icon": true, "domain": "talos-agent.ch", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://talos-agent.ch", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Talos", "Talos Linux"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795187280, "item_id": 49699205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699205", "by": "noodlesUK", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Talos for my homelab and have been considering using it for work.", "excerpt": "The company behind Talos Linux has been acquired by Yardi (of WeWork fame). I use Talos for my homelab and have been considering using it for work. I'm a little worried about the future direction. I'm not sure why they want to add VMs as a native resource rather than going in the direction of KubeVirt as a first class citizen (which already worked well).", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab Kubernetes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sidero Labs (Talos Linux) Joins Yardi"}, {"id": 793898002, "item_id": 49618625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618625", "by": "abejora", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We are now running a full kubernetes cluster on Talos Linux", "excerpt": "https://www.abejora.com/ - Timesheet registration software We try to differentiate in a few ways: * we try to be as fast and user friendly as possible, because nobody likes filling in timesheets: logical screens that align with the task you need to perform, keyboard support, flexible input... * democratic pricing. a lot of competitors hide the good stuff behind the expensive subscriptions, and per-seat pricing quickl", "context": "", "use_case": "Kubernetes hosting OS", "switched_from": "Debian", "story": "Ask HN: Show your micro-SaaS"}, {"id": 787791296, "item_id": 49236956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49236956", "by": "sshine", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal.", "excerpt": "They certainly aren't exclusive. But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal. For small Kubernetes version upgrades, I upgrade the kubelet with an API command. When that isn't possible, I upload a new Talos image and swap them. Since the nodes are cloud VMs, I will use a spare VM to add as a new node, and remove an old node. So I never run with fewer nodes. For my on-prem cluster, I ", "context": "runs cloud and on-prem Kubernetes clusters", "use_case": "Kubernetes node host OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802138481, "item_id": 50133655, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133655", "by": "astralkraft", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I honestly don't miss Talos", "excerpt": "I think you're confusing this. Talos is kubernetes. It can only be as good or as bad as Kubernetes. This is different. A complete rethink of immutable infrastructure with a decade of additional hindsight. I switched from Talos to OKD. I honestly don't miss Talos, but would like to be done with k8s altogether.", "context": "", "use_case": "immutable Kubernetes OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosted infrastructure with Incus OS"}]}], "who": [{"by": "attilaolah", "context": "self-hosts on many small nodes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115461", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "noodlesUK", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699205", "date": "2026-09-14"}, {"by": "sshine", "context": "runs cloud and on-prem Kubernetes clusters", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49236956", "date": "2026-08-09"}, {"by": "FireBeyond", "context": "homelab operator", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "date": "2026-07-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["kubernetes cluster os", "immutable kubernetes os", "kubernetes node os", "homelab kubernetes", "kubernetes hosting os", "kubernetes node host os"], "compared": [{"slug": "okd", "name": "OKD", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "debian", "name": "Debian", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kubernetes", "name": "Kubernetes", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "nixos", "name": "NixOS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 791640608, "item_id": 49477538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477538", "by": "kurdman_007", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I built Talos because I wanted to hand an agent a terminal without handing it my trust model.", "excerpt": "Hi HN \u2014 maker here. I built Talos because I wanted to hand an agent a terminal without handing it my trust model. Every tool call (read, write, exec, delegate) passes a small deterministic kernel, ~645 lines of Python, that returns allow, needs-human or deny. Unattended runs can't ask, so needs-human becomes deny. The agent can never grant itself anything. Around that kernel: 23 gated tools, a UID-separated worker fo", "context": "", "use_case": "permissioned AI agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Talos \u2013 An AI agent with a permission kernel between model and shell"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124646", "title": "Self-hosted infrastructure with Incus OS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49877097", "title": "item 49877097", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699204", "title": "Sidero Labs (Talos Linux) Joins Yardi", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49590656", "title": "Ask HN: Show your micro-SaaS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477530", "title": "Show HN: Talos \u2013 An AI agent with a permission kernel between model and shell", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802138481, "item_id": 50133655, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133655", "by": "astralkraft", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I honestly don't miss Talos", "excerpt": "I think you're confusing this. Talos is kubernetes. It can only be as good or as bad as Kubernetes. This is different. A complete rethink of immutable infrastructure with a decade of additional hindsight. I switched from Talos to OKD. I honestly don't miss Talos, but would like to be done with k8s altogether.", "context": "", "use_case": "immutable Kubernetes OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosted infrastructure with Incus OS"}, {"id": 801847381, "item_id": 50115461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115461", "by": "attilaolah", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "hybrid Talos / Alpine+k0s on nodes too small for Talos", "excerpt": "I also used to run everything on K8s (hybrid Talos / Alpine+k0s on nodes too small for Talos). It is a fun exercise, but with many small nodes eventually I realised I was burning a quarter of my fleet's CPU on just monitoring and routing services. Eventually I switched to Systemd only, Clan-managed NixOS instances on bare metal. The killer feature for me is socket activation. It even works with Jellyfin, wrapped in s", "context": "self-hosts on many small nodes", "use_case": "Kubernetes node OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 798033571, "item_id": 49877098, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49877098", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I had both of these running in a Talos Kubernetes cluster.", "excerpt": "I connected my TrueNAS box to Graphite and Grafana. I had both of these running in a Talos Kubernetes cluster. The metrics were sent over correctly, but the imported dashboard I was using from the Grafana community showed no data because it expected older TrueNAS metric paths. So, I got this fixed after remapping the panels. Then, I found another issue. It interpreted an ARC value in bytes as megabytes and displayed ", "context": "", "use_case": "Kubernetes cluster OS", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 795187280, "item_id": 49699205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699205", "by": "noodlesUK", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Talos for my homelab and have been considering using it for work.", "excerpt": "The company behind Talos Linux has been acquired by Yardi (of WeWork fame). I use Talos for my homelab and have been considering using it for work. I'm a little worried about the future direction. I'm not sure why they want to add VMs as a native resource rather than going in the direction of KubeVirt as a first class citizen (which already worked well).", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab Kubernetes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sidero Labs (Talos Linux) Joins Yardi"}, {"id": 793898002, "item_id": 49618625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618625", "by": "abejora", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We are now running a full kubernetes cluster on Talos Linux", "excerpt": "https://www.abejora.com/ - Timesheet registration software We try to differentiate in a few ways: * we try to be as fast and user friendly as possible, because nobody likes filling in timesheets: logical screens that align with the task you need to perform, keyboard support, flexible input... * democratic pricing. a lot of competitors hide the good stuff behind the expensive subscriptions, and per-seat pricing quickl", "context": "", "use_case": "Kubernetes hosting OS", "switched_from": "Debian", "story": "Ask HN: Show your micro-SaaS"}, {"id": 787791296, "item_id": 49236956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49236956", "by": "sshine", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal.", "excerpt": "They certainly aren't exclusive. But as the host OS I use Talos Linux, which itself is declarative and minimal. For small Kubernetes version upgrades, I upgrade the kubelet with an API command. When that isn't possible, I upload a new Talos image and swap them. Since the nodes are cloud VMs, I will use a spare VM to add as a new node, and remove an old node. So I never run with fewer nodes. For my on-prem cluster, I ", "context": "runs cloud and on-prem Kubernetes clusters", "use_case": "Kubernetes node host OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded"}, {"id": 780003172, "item_id": 48750198, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "by": "FireBeyond", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It spins up Talos to drive a Kubernetes cluster", "excerpt": "I got sick of the work around it, so one weekend recently, while my partner was out of town, I used Claude to help re-architect my whole homelab to be effectively 100% IaC with OpenTofu and Salt. Went through the whole architecture, networking, etc. Now I would just need to pull down the repo to my Mac and can spin everything up via PXE to install Proxmox, Ubuntu, etc., and then I have a scheduled golden image build,", "context": "homelab operator", "use_case": "Kubernetes cluster OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab"}]}