RancherOS vs Ubuntu for docker

Is RancherOS intended to be used with RancherServer only? I was going to use it for docker-swarm instead of Ubuntu just because I know it’s designed for docker containers and Ubuntu isn’t. But now I’m wondering if that’s even the right thing to do. Are there still advantages of using RancherOS over Ubuntu if it’s used without RancherServer? Thanks.

There is no special integration between Rancher and RancherOS, it’s just a minimal way to get Docker on a host.

I find it very useful to use RancherOS as I have a group of auto-healing Docker swarms on AWS. RancherOS allows new machines to join very quickly as they are very minimal, already have Docker and work well with the cloud-init system.

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How much RAM does RancherOS use by default? I spun up the image on AWS and it appeared to use close to 500Mb but Ubuntu server was using closer to 50Mb. I followed a guide to install RancherOS on Linode and it was using about 170Mb. Have any of you noticed? It seems like a big discrepancy between the two. I’m low budget so any saved RAM is a plus for me. Thanks for the feedback @vincent @stuart .