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I want to use alpine for my containers because it's a minimalist distro with a nice package manager with up-to-date packages. Reasons I don't like common altern
by ekimekim 5y ago
I want to use alpine for my containers because it's a minimalist distro with a nice package manager with up-to-date packages. Reasons I don't like common alternatives:
* ubuntu - Increasingly hostile to container usage (I tried to install a package recently, the install "succeeded" but at runtime the installed binary simply printed 'oh actually this is a stub, use snap instead' and exited), along with all the other downsides of debian (see below)
* debian - Very old packages if you're running a supported version. There's a ton of boilerplate to make apt behave itself in a container environment, something like "apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=non-interactive apt-get install --assume-yes --no-install-recommends PACKAGE", compare to "apk --update add PACKAGE".
* distroless - More work to create and manage, can't install things ad-hoc in a running container for debugging purposes
As it is, I use debian and put up with the annoyances and need to occasionally install things from source to get a modern version. But there's really no good options. Alpine would be amazing, except I've hit too many problems with musl (though I'm sure it's not actually musl's fault). If someone was advertising "alpine but with glibc" and it actually WAS that (not "alpine with glibc tacked on top"), I'd use it in a heartbeat.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago> ubuntu - Increasingly hostile to container usage (I tried to install a package recently, the install "succeeded" but at runtime the installed binary simply printed 'oh actually this is a stub, use snap instead' and exited) Was it chromium?
- vbezhenar 5y agoWhat about RedHat or CentOS images? Check out redhat/ubi8-minimal for example.
- jleahy 5y agoArch?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoHave you ever heard of Fedora? They have a base container image.
- ariadneconill 5y ago+1 for a glibc-based Alpine-ish distribution. a few Alpine folks have made them over the years, but they never gained traction.