Hi, I'm the author of the article (OpenFaaS founder).
Slicer came about as an internal tool (2022) for rapid customer support where we needed real Linux or Kubernetes clusters, not in a few minutes, but as quickly as possible. It shares a lot of code with actuated (ephemeral, self-hosted CI runners).
It's grown and evolved and gained a Mac version which I mention in the post (with a video demo).
We're seeing fragmentation in the world of sandboxes - both in local or SaaS. We've seen that before with FaaS, and openfaas gave a consolidated UX.
We think slicervm can do the same today.
There are many SaaS and OSS tools in the VM and space. Slicer is a premium experience, that's fast and just works with opinionated defaults and a full Kernel, Ubuntu LTS and systemd.
Free trial available, or individual tier with commercial usage allowed.
