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Minimal Ubuntu – how small can it go?
- PopsiclePete 8y agoWhen Alpine doesn't cut it, I use Debian's "slim" docker images. 55MB size. This minimal ubuntu is slightly smaller, but I don't see anything else novel about it - why should I be excited?
- marenkay 8y agoThat would be the real question: considering Ubuntu is just a Debian fork, what is the benefit of using Ubuntu on a server?
- smacktoward 8y agoUbuntu Server comes with a bunch of nice quality-of-life improvements that make using it more pleasant than using stock Debian, and you get the predictability of Ubuntu's standardized release cadence (a new release every 6 months on the dot, alongside longer-lived LTS versions).
- ndiscussion 8y agoAs someone who runs a tiny VPS with stock Debian, I'm interested (but skeptical). It's not your job but what do you feel are some of the best QOL improvements?
- jstarfish 8y agoNot speaking for the parent, but I much prefer Ubuntu over Debian in this context for the sake of the wider variety of packages from official repos that aren't a few versions behind by default.
- smacktoward 8y agoLittle things. UFW included by default, so you can set up a firewall without having to wrestle with iptables. do-release-upgrade to handle upgrades, instead of having to work through a list of release notes each time. Nothing earth-shaking, just things that sand down some of Debian’s rougher edges.
- marenkay 8y agoI have to say, none of these are benefits for productive use. You may want long-term stability out of a release, which is IMHO where Debian shines more. They provide much longer support times than what a Ubuntu LTS offers. The latest and greatest package is not so much beneficial in production, and e.g. with containers you do not even have to bother much about it since all you probably care for is kernel and container runtime updates. What I still would be interested in though is if there is any technical benefit from Ubuntu server? Something which is not easily resolved by configuration management or a simple "apt-get install"?
- ithkuil 8y agoThere is also https://github.com/bitnami/minideb https://github.com/bitnami/minideb
- nikolay 8y agoExcept that it's not in Docker Hub... yet!
- FlyingSnake 8y ago> The unminimize tool lets you ‘rehydrate’ your image into a familiar Ubuntu server package set, suitable for command line interaction. Nice 'Three body problem' reference they've sneaked in.
- YuriNiyazov 8y agoWhat’s this? Please explain to the uninitiated
- sidmitra 8y agoIt's a reference to the sci-fi book The three body problem by Liu Cixin[1]. In that ta mysterious game about an alien planet where its population can be dehydrated to survive harsh conditions which could last millenia, and then re-hydrated when the conditions are right. Although i think the terms hydrate-dehydrate are not unheard of in tech stacks for example in a django REST framework called tastypie to denote serialization-deserialization of data. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)
- sli 8y agoYeah it's a pretty widely used term. ReactDOM has a hydrate() method[0] used to display something on the frontend that has already been rendered by the backend. [0]: https://reactjs.org/docs/react-dom.html#hydrate https://reactjs.org/docs/react-dom.html#hydrate
- Guillaume86 8y agoI know the reference but in this case I would consider "rehydrate" as the standard term for these kind of things.
- cal5k 8y agoCool! Alpine is a neat project, but I find package management on Alpine to be a uniformly frustrating experience. Having a tiny version of Ubuntu for docker is a fantastic idea.
- ksec 8y agoI am guessing that Alpine is gaining traction ( I hope it is anyway ), so Ubuntu had to respond? For 24MB more than Alpine, you get the stability and long term support from Ubuntu. I think a third of the size difference are glibc and muslc?
- ryenus 8y agoSo the RFC comes true https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292883