Abstract: As a kind of lightweight virtualization technology, container has not only been widely used in resource management and DevOps of cloud computing platform and data center in recent years, but also gradually applied to some new fields such as edge computing and Internet of things. Container has shown a good development trend and application prospect. So, operating system virtualization as a core technology of container has received widespread attention in both industry and academia. Operating system virtualization allows multiple applications to run in a set of isolated runtime environment by sharing the same host operating system kernel. It has the advantages of fast startup, convenient deployment, low resource consumption, high running efficiency. However, there are also deficiencies such as weak isolation. And the deficiency has become a research hotspot in the field of virtualization. In this survey, we first introduce the technical architecture of operating system virtualization and compare it with traditional virtualization technology to summarize its characteristics. Then we analyze the current research status of operating system virtualization from container instance layer, container management layer and kernel resource layer. Finally, the paper lays out several challenges and research prospects of operating system virtualization.