Red Hat has introduced the Fedora Hummingbird project at the Red Hat Summit 2026 conference, offering a new continuously updated edition of Fedora Linux, built in the form of a collection of containers. To reduce the attack surface, the containers include only the minimal set of components necessary to address specific tasks. Software versions are promptly updated, as soon as possible after release by the main projects. The update installation process is automated. The tools used in the project are open under the MIT license.
Container images are published for amd64 and arm64 architectures. Currently, 49 container options are available in the catalog (including FIPS and multi-arch editions — 157), allowing the deployment of working environments with Python, Go, Node.js, Rust, Ruby, OpenJDK, .NET, PostgreSQL, nginx, and other open projects. The images are formed according to the 'Distroless' principle, meaning they do not include a package manager and programming interpreter (shell), but contain only the target application and the necessary components for its operation.
95% of the packages used in the Hummingbird container images are built from the Fedora Rawhide repository, while the remaining 5% are downloaded and built directly from the upstream repositories. These 5% include applications that are absent in Rawhide or have outdated releases in Rawhide. To build Hummingbird independently of Fedora, separate RPM packages are maintained, built in a separate infrastructure from the standard Fedora SPEC files, which allows for the addition of project-specific optimizations and modifications when necessary.
The provided builds are compatible with images from Docker Hub, Red Hat UBI, and other registries, which simplifies the migration of existing systems to Hummingbird. Unlike the CoreOS project, which provides minimalist host builds for container orchestration, Hummingbird is aimed at developers who need to use different versions of runtime simultaneously (Python 3.11-3.14, Go 1.25-1.26, Node.js 20-25, etc.) and separately manage the lifecycle of each version.
Unlike traditional containers, most Hummingbird options operate by default under an unprivileged user without root access. Containers support reproducible builds and can be rebuilt by the user from the provided source code to ensure that the images created by the project match exactly. For ease of verification, source containers are provided with all the necessary code and source RPM packages. To ensure security, the contents of the containers are built in an isolated environment with no network access.
In addition to containers for running end applications, the project develops the bootable host image bootc-os, built using container boot technology and suitable for installation on disk. The system image combines Hummingbird components, Linux kernel packages from the CKI (Continuous Kernel Integration) project, a bootloader, and system services from Fedora. The entire system is packaged as an OCI container. The bootc-os is automatically updated with each reboot. The tools Podman and Skopeo are used to run containers from the bootc-os environment.
Source: opennet.ru
