IOx and guestshell on IOS XE
Most of the recent firmware on Cisco devices run on top of Linux operating system. Yout IOS XE or NX-OS is just a Linux process! It is nothing new; Juniper does it for years. However, it does not mean you can access the operating system directly; this is reserved just for Cisco TAC and developers in case the base operating system might be the source of the problems. However, you can use the IOx and the guestshell container introduced in IOS XE Everest 16.5.1 release.