Using Alpine Linux for Docker images is doable, of course, but, as the post admits, Ubuntu is the "cloud OS of choice". Now it has the critical mass in terms of

Using Alpine Linux for Docker images is doable, of course, but, as the post admits, Ubuntu is the "cloud OS of choice". Now it has the critical mass in terms of samples, deployment automation scripts, and packages. The package ecosystem is the key here though. Can you really get the same packages in Alpine? Yes, in some cases, but you can't say with a straight face that Alpine == Ubuntu :-) So if you can't go the Alpine (or if you don't want to :-)) there's a tool you can try. It's called DockerSlim. It was created for the Docker Global Hack day that ended a few days ago. You can see a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKdHnfEbc-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKdHnfEbc-E The demo shows how I minified a 430MB Ubuntu 14 based Docker image (result: 40MB image that can be 9MB smaller once the tool is refactored and enhanced). It's not production quality yet (it's a mess though it works for simple images), but it's a good start. Contributions are highly encouraged :-)