Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 17, 2026

IncludeOS

IncludeOS is a minimal, open source, unikernel operating system for cloud services and IoT, developed by Alf Walla and Andreas Åkesson. IncludeOS allows users to run C++ applications in the cloud without any operating system.

Last revised
Jun 17, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
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Citations
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Source
Wikipedia ↗
IncludeOS
DeveloperIncludeOS AS1
Written inC++
Source modelOpen source
Initial releaseAugust 18, 2014 (2014-08-18)
Marketing targetCloud computing
Supported platformsx86, x86-64
Kernel typeUnikernel
UserlandPOSIX subset, custom
LicenseApache License 2.0
Official websitewww.includeos.org

IncludeOS is a minimal, open source, unikernel operating system for cloud services and IoT, developed by Alf Walla and Andreas Åkesson.12 IncludeOS allows users to run C++ applications in the cloud without any operating system.

IncludeOS runs on virtual machines like Linux KVM, and VMWare ESXi/Fusion.3

IncludeOS applications boot in about 300 ms. On Solo5/uKVM from IBM Research, boot times as low as 10 milliseconds are possible.4

Architecture

The minimalist architecture of IncludeOS means that it does not have any virtual memory space. In turn, therefore, there is no concept of either system calls or user space.3

References

References

  1. Stig Øyvann (2018-11-12). "IoT security and Linux: Why IncludeOS thinks it has the edge". ZDNet.
  2. Yegulalp, Serdar (2 December 2015). "IncludeOS: Run cloud applications with less". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  3. Hussein, Nur (25 July 2017). "IncludeOS: a unikernel for C++ applications". LWN.net. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  4. "Includeos/IncludeOS". GitHub.
External links