SIGHUP Distribution

Judgement

What it is

Complete system

What it does

A CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution built on upstream Kubernetes, bundling selected modules for networking, monitoring, logging, ingress and policy, installed with the furyctl tool.

Adopt it when

You want a curated, upstream-based Kubernetes stack with a European vendor available for support.

Watch out

Its community is small and mostly around SIGHUP's customers.

Ready for

Usable

Runs as

Self-hosted server and command line

Built with

Kubernetes, Terraform and Go templates

How established

Established: started 6 years ago, latest release v1.36.0.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: SIGHUP Distribution → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to SIGHUP Distribution

1. 1
   Kubernetes kubernetes

   Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

   Framework or platform Production-ready You run many services across many machines and have, or will hire, the platform engineers to operate a cluster or a managed one.

   ★ 129k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
   
2. 2
   Moby moby

   The Moby Project - a collaborative project for the container ecosystem to assemble container-based systems

   Building block Production-ready You are building or modifying a container platform and need the upstream engine source rather than the packaged Docker product.

   ★ 72k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
   
3. 3
   K3s k3s-io

   Lightweight Kubernetes

   Building block Production-ready You need real Kubernetes on edge devices, small VMs, homelabs or CI, where a full distribution is too heavy.

   ★ 34k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
   
4. 4
   Talos Linux siderolabs

   Talos Linux is a modern Linux distribution built for Kubernetes.

   Complete system Production-ready You run your own Kubernetes clusters on bare metal or VMs and want an OS with little to patch and no manual drift.

   ★ 11k MPL-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
5. 5
   Podman Desktop podman-desktop

   Podman Desktop is the best free and open source tool to work with Containers and Kubernetes for developers. Get an intuitive and user-friendly interface to effortlessly build, manage, and deploy containers and Kubernetes — all from your desktop.

   Developer tool Production-ready Developers need a free graphical alternative to Docker Desktop, for instance because Docker's licence fees apply to your company size.

   ★ 8.1k Apache-2.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today
6. 6
   k0s k0sproject

   k0s - The Zero Friction Kubernetes

   Building block Production-ready You want a certified, plain-upstream Kubernetes that installs the same way on bare metal, VMs, edge or air-gapped sites.

   ★ 6.6k See repository Go Active, pushed today
7. 7
   OKD okd-project

   The self-managing, auto-upgrading, Kubernetes distribution for everyone

   Complete system Usable You want OpenShift's developer and operations features without a Red Hat subscription and can support it yourself.

   ★ 2.1k Apache-2.0 HCL Active, pushed today
8. 8
   Gately wangwanjie

   Open-source, auditable network gateway for homelabs, NAS and servers: DDNS, STUN traversal, port forwarding with SNI routing, reverse proxy and web server, ACME certificates, WAF, Tailscale, frp, Cloudflare Tunnel, Docker and web terminal in one binary. Runs on Docker, fnOS, OpenWrt, Linux, macOS and Windows.

   Complete system Experimental You run a homelab or NAS behind a home router and want DDNS, certificates and a reverse proxy in one console instead of several separate tools.

   ★ 477 Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed yesterday