Docker images should really be distroless most of the time. There’s way too much junk in the majority of Docker images when in most cases, you really just need your app and whatever dynamic libraries or runtimes it requires (if you can’t statically compile it). You don’t need an OS in there!
Also there’d be way more servers running Debian compared to Ubuntu.
You often (if not most of the time) need some infrastructure in OCI containers (while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the misnomer Docker image). And that’s going to be some subset of a distribution hand-crafted for that purpose. Most of the time, that should be Alpine, because they provide the slimmest base image.
Most of the time, that should be Alpine, because they provide the slimmest base image.
Distroless containers (e.g. github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless, Chiselled Ubuntu, etc) are often smaller than Alpine ones. Google’s smallest Debian-based one is around 2MB.
I have a Dockerized C# app… I’m going to try .NET Native AOT (which was improved a lot in .NET 8, released today) to compile it into a self-contained binary, and see how well it works with a distroless base container.
I’m curious to hear how that works out. I’m a big fan of C#; not so much the Microsoft ecosystem. I’d say for maximum scalability you’d want languages which compile to small binaries. So, Go, Rust, C++, C, and theoretically some others. The approach with Java and C# to bundle the framework, JIT, etc, and then try to shave off as much as you can get away with feels kind of backwards. And I get the excitement of the Java folks when they manage to create a self-contained binary with GraalVM and co of 12mb. Like, that’s impressive, but had you developed the same thing with Go it would be .5mb. Curious to see how .NET fares in that comparison to Java.
I’d love to agree but unfortunately with them pushing snaps I can’t. When I used snaps I found them to be extremely buggy and if I didn’t already know there were other distributions with other better package managers I would’ve straight up assumed it was a Linux problem and I’d just have gone back to windows. If there was no other Noob-friendly distro out there I could say “sure it’s an ok distro” but there are better alternatives that don’t do the same shitty decisions as canonical (like Linux Mint which is the one I recommend to every noob coming from windows or Pop_OS! for those who want something similiar to MacOS).
Just because it’s Lemmy, I’m gonna share my “shitty Ubuntu” story, which is less about Ubuntu being shitty and more about me being a noob.
I had a 2004 MacBook that my grandmother gave me for college when she upgraded. I didn’t hate it, but this being my first experience with a laptop, when the bottom 2/3 of the screen started blinking in and out, I thought maybe it was a software problem, so with the help of an SD card and my buddy’s old CRT setup I downloaded Ubuntu onto a thumb drive. When I went back to my parents’ place I decided that that was the moment to install, because my dad was really into jailbreaking his iPhone at the time, so I thought it’d be cool if we did kinda similar things together. Unfortunately because I couldn’t see the bottom of the screen, I had no idea about the progress of the install, got impatient, and just decided to turn the thing off. This had the effect of deleting the partition tables, and it would have been like $200 to get a new hard drive. I would have paid it, but before I could, the guy I had helping me fix the thing moved away and took my lappy with him.
I’d have gone with a spork. Not particularly good at anything it was built to do, but functional enough to get the job done, and pretty straight forward to use.
Please put an NSFW tag on this. I was on the train and when I saw this I had to start furiously masterbating. Everyone else gave me strange looks and were saying things like “what the fuck” and “call the police”. I dropped my phone and everyone around me saw this image. Now there is a whole train of men masterbating together at this one image. This is all your fault, you could have prevented this if you had just tagged this post NSFW.
Counterpoint, Ubuntu is popular because it usually has what you need. For home stuff especially the limiting factor is usually time, not processing power.
I’d challenge that asking what do you really need above base Debian?
I’ve got a script to set up my debian servers and it doesn’t include much beyond adding docker, assigning users to groups, and adding a couple tools (just looked them up: sudo ca-certificates curl gnupg ufw).
I saw a significant decrease in idle CPU and RAM load by switching from Ubuntu-server to Debian Bookworm + those tools.
Anyone who bashes distros hasn't really understood Linux. The fact that you can choose gives us the ability to choose the right tool for the job. Ubuntu has pushed a few weird things into the Linux world, but the distro itself is still legit.
In the spirit of bashing Ubuntu, I’d like to propose we stick with the swiss army knife. But it’s one of those strange Kickstarter projects where it’s entirely controlled by an unnecessary phone app.
Arch being something that requires some research and prep beforehand makes sense through. As well as having fans who will swear that is actually quite enjoyable if you try it.
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