GravityKit
GravityKit ships weekly across a whole plugin suite, with an MCP server now part of the lineup.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
Incus vs runc
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Incus and runc — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Incus vs runc: at a glance
What is Incus?
Incus settled its 7.0 LTS, then went straight back to a monthly feature cadence.
7.0.0 LTS landed in early May and became the supported baseline, followed by 7.0.1 as its first patch. The feature branch has not paused: 7.1 in May cleaned up the issues the LTS surfaced, 7.2 in June added migration-compatible hypervisor flags for stateful migration and aligned node-specific network configuration, and 7.3 at the end of July added native Windows and macOS installers to the build workflow, a QMP command timeout, and /32 and /128 addresses for OCI containers. Underneath, QEMU capabilities like SPICE, 9p and virtio audio are increasingly gated on runtime detection rather than assumed.
What is runc?
runc now publishes an end-of-life calendar, and three branches shipped the same CVE fix in two days.
1.5.0 in June was the first stable release of the 1.5.z series and the third under runc's formal release and support policy: 1.2.z and earlier are unsupported, 1.3.z receives only high-severity CVE fixes until the end of October 2026, and 1.4.z is limited to security and significant bugfixes. A month later 1.5.1 fixed a real-world regression — the maskPaths optimisation from 1.5.0-rc.3 broke tmpfs mounts with nr_inodes=1 on Ubuntu 20.04 kernels. In mid-June, CVE-2026-41579 was fixed simultaneously across 1.3.6, 1.4.3 and 1.5.0-rc.3 and released with no embargo.
Incus vs runc: editorial side-by-side
Incus
5.0INFRA · APIS
Incus settled its 7.0 LTS, then went straight back to a monthly feature cadence.
◆ Current state
7.0.0 LTS landed in early May and became the supported baseline, followed by 7.0.1 as its first patch. The feature branch has not paused: 7.1 in May cleaned up the issues the LTS surfaced, 7.2 in June added migration-compatible hypervisor flags for stateful migration and aligned node-specific network configuration, and 7.3 at the end of July added native Windows and macOS installers to the build workflow, a QMP command timeout, and /32 and /128 addresses for OCI containers. Underneath, QEMU capabilities like SPICE, 9p and virtio audio are increasingly gated on runtime detection rather than assumed.
◆ Where it's heading
The rhythm is a monthly feature release running alongside a long-term branch, and the recent work leans toward reach rather than new primitives: clients built natively for Windows and macOS, translations updated in nearly every release, feature gating so the same daemon behaves correctly across host configurations. Stateful migration getting migration-compatible CPU flags is the most operationally significant item, since it is what makes live migration work across non-identical hosts.
◆ Prediction
The cadence in this window is a feature release roughly every four to six weeks with LTS patches interleaved, so a 7.4 is the expected next step. The entries give no indication of a headline feature queued for it.
runc
2.5INFRA · APIS
runc now publishes an end-of-life calendar, and three branches shipped the same CVE fix in two days.
◆ Current state
1.5.0 in June was the first stable release of the 1.5.z series and the third under runc's formal release and support policy: 1.2.z and earlier are unsupported, 1.3.z receives only high-severity CVE fixes until the end of October 2026, and 1.4.z is limited to security and significant bugfixes. A month later 1.5.1 fixed a real-world regression — the maskPaths optimisation from 1.5.0-rc.3 broke tmpfs mounts with nr_inodes=1 on Ubuntu 20.04 kernels. In mid-June, CVE-2026-41579 was fixed simultaneously across 1.3.6, 1.4.3 and 1.5.0-rc.3 and released with no embargo.
◆ Where it's heading
The project is behaving like infrastructure with a contract. Publishing dated support windows and shipping a coordinated fix across every live branch on the same day is the operating posture of a component that sits under every container on a host, where operators need to know what they are still entitled to. The CVE itself is instructive: a /dev symlink escape in the same family as three earlier CVEs, found by re-auditing the rootfs preparation code that had been hardened before.
◆ Prediction
1.5.0's notes state that a 1.6.0 is expected in late October 2026, which is also when 1.3.z support ends — so the next milestone is that pairing. Expect 1.5.z patches until then.
Alternatives to Incus and runc
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Incus or runc.
LibreSpeed
After a two-year redesign, LibreSpeed is adding tests instead of polishing pixels.
Nautobot
A security advisory cycle forced Nautobot to break its REST API on both supported branches at once.
Gatekeeper
Gatekeeper grew a package manager for policies — and a benchmark to prove they are not too slow.
GoCD
GoCD's changelog is one maintainer keeping a 2010s CI server running on current runtimes.
Firecracker
Firecracker's microVMs can now grow and shrink devices while running.
Recent activity from Incus and runc
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 7d agoIncusNative Windows and macOS installers; QMP command timeouts
- 24d agorunctmpfs regression on Ubuntu 20.04 kernels fixed
- 27d agoIncusFirst patch release on the 7.0 LTS branch
- 1mo agoIncusMigration-compatible hypervisor flags for stateful migration
- 1mo agoruncrunc 1.5.0 stable, with dated support windows for older branches
- 1mo agoruncCVE-2026-41579: /dev symlink host write access fixed
- 1mo agoruncRelease candidate carrying the CVE-2026-41579 fix
- 1mo agoruncCVE-2026-41579 fix backported to the 1.4 branch
- 2mo agoIncusFixes for issues surfaced by the 7.0 release
- 3mo agoIncusIncus 7.0 LTS, with runtime-detected QEMU feature gating
- 4mo agoruncBuild fixes and seccomp WaitKillableRecv support
- 4mo agoIncusVolume snapshots while attached; OVN dhcp gateway option
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Incus and runc?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Incus is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Incus better than runc?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Incus is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Incus?
Top Incus alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Incus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/incus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to runc?
Top runc alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "runc alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/runc for the full list with editorial commentary on each.