Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Incus 6.x on Fedora 43 and 44 (also Ubuntu 24.04 and later and Debian 13); LXD 6.x through snap
LXD manages system containers (full Linux systems that share the host kernel) and virtual machines with one simple command-line tool. In 2023 Canonical took LXD under its own control, and the community continued the project as Incus, led by LXD's original developers. On Fedora, Incus is the packaged choice: it is in Fedora's own repositories (version 6.23 in Fedora 44), while LXD is only available as a snap. The commands are nearly identical, with incus instead of lxc.
Install Incus on Fedora
- Install it and start its socket:
sudo dnf install incus sudo systemctl enable --now incus.socket
- Allow your user to manage it, then log in again (or run
newgrp incus-admin):sudo usermod -aG incus-admin $USER
- Run the first-time setup and accept the defaults for a storage pool and a network bridge:
incus admin init
On Ubuntu 24.04 and later and on Debian 13, install it with sudo apt install incus and continue with steps 2 and 3.
First containers
incus launch images:almalinux/9 web1 # a system container incus launch images:debian/13 vm1 --vm # a virtual machine incus list incus exec web1 -- bash # a shell inside the container incus stop web1 && incus delete web1
Images come from the public image server images:; list them with incus image list images: almalinux.
Snapshots and resources
incus snapshot create web1 before-update incus snapshot restore web1 before-update incus config set web1 limits.cpu=2 limits.memory=2GiB
Firewall note
Incus creates a bridge (incusbr0) and needs DHCP, DNS and forwarding through it. With firewalld on Fedora, add the bridge to the trusted zone if containers get no network: sudo firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --change-interface=incusbr0 --permanent && sudo firewall-cmd --reload.
Coming from LXD
Incus uses the same concepts and a very similar command set. The Incus documentation describes how to migrate an existing LXD installation, including its containers, to Incus.
Official documentation: Installing Incus and Incus documentation.
