The discussion centers on Devvm.dev as part of a crowded field of project isolation tools, with users comparing it to established alternatives like smolvm and Docker Sandbox while debating the necessity of microVMs over container-based solutions. Strong disagreement exists regarding security trade-offs, with some arguing that VMs offer superior kernel isolation against malicious agents while others highlight the complexity and resource overhead compared to simpler namespace or container approaches.
79 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4microvm-nix
microvm.nix
Nix2022–2025
microvm-nix / microvm.nix
microvm.nix
NixOS MicroVMs
8Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.1KGitHub stars
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NixOS MicroVMs
GitHub
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-04-21 13:46:17 UTC to 2025-04-12 18:13:18 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesNYnylonstrung·Apr 12, 2025
Very interesting!
It's cool to see some of the most cutting edge infra teams coming around to a tool that came well before Docker.
Since you're presumably using nixos VMs a lot, I'd be curious if you have any thoughts on this project. It's Nix hypervisor + microvms as an alternative to containers
https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix
In Nix Derivations, Without GuessingHave you tried https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix ?
You can use the same NixOS module for both declarative VMs and imperatively configured and spawned VMs.
In We're Leaving KubernetesOne technique employed by microvm.nix[0] is to mount the hosts /nix/store into the guest. This won't shrink the size of the system, but should allow it to be amortized across many different VMs.
I'm not sure how exploitable a read-only virtiofs share is, so this is perhaps not appropriate in some circumstances.
[0]: https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix
In NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn'tI would not call these projects unbelievable, but they are neat.
Opt-in state:
https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence
https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings
Ease of setting up a real-time audio on Linux:
https://github.com/musnix/musnix
Generating virtual machines/installators from a configuration:
https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix
https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators
It's interesting to scroll through nix-darwin options, I wasn't even aware of some useful macOS options before:
https://daiderd.com/nix-darwin/manual/index.html
A neat collection of music information retrieval packages in one place (and the ease of creating your own package registry):
https://github.com/carlthome/mirpkgs
In Tvix – A New Implementation of NixHow are you managing the VM’s on NixOS?
A couple years ago I was searching for a good way to declaratively manage them, and the best I came up with was libvirt + terraform + nixos-generators for images. It feels like you should just be able to set them up as systemd units, but I couldn’t figure it out.
microvm has caught my eye recently but I haven’t played with it yet: https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix
In NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”FWIW, the contemporary alternative to 9p is virtiofs. It is implemented as a separate service that is running aside the hypervisor. Originally out of qemu, it was rewritten in Rust as a freestanding project that can also be used with cloud-hypervisor and crosvm.
https://gitlab.com/virtio-fs/virtiofsd
On NixOS: https://github.com/astro/microvm.nix
In Digging into a QEMU problem of slow data copyingMicrovm.nix: A Nix Flake to Easily Run NixOS MicroVMs on NixOS
2 points · Open discussion