What you need for this book
A beginner-level knowledge of Linux and the command line should be enough to follow along and run the examples. Some Python and C knowledge is required to fully understand and experiment with the code snippets, though the book is not about software development and you can skip Chapter 4, LXC Code Integration with Python altogether, if not interested.
In terms of hardware and software requirements, most examples in the book have been tested in virtual machines utilizing various cloud providers such as Amazon AWS and Rackspace Cloud. We recommend using the latest version of Ubuntu, given Canonical's involvement with the LXC project, though we provide examples with CentOS whenever the installation/operation methods diverge.