GoogleContainerTools/distroless on Hacker News

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Language focused Docker images, minus the operating system. Topics

story by mooreds · 2026-08-26 · 0 comments

https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless These are pretty handy to use

comment by Zizizizz · 2026-03-08 · in A decade of Docker containers

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Distroless

story by m-hodges · 2025-12-06 · 0 comments

There are Distroless images! You can make a container with nothing but one executable in it. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless has some helpers but you can just put your rust or go program into an image & ship it! For if…

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2025-07-04 · in Kubernetes is a symptom, not a solution

…or python or whatever base image, built on a nice slim OS or distroless (no starter required but https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless is a resource), and add just a little more of your stuff on top. The profile of what needs…

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2025-07-04 · in Kubernetes is a symptom, not a solution

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Distroless: Language focused Docker images, minus the operating system

story by tosh · 2024-09-01 · 1 comment

…what "minimalist" mean (does it mean it's based on Ubuntu Minimal? Alpine? Distroless?). [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by hifromwork · 2024-06-30 · in Canonical's 'distroless' Linux images are a game-changer for enterprises

…and maintaining a distro, which is normally all done at container build time. From the Debian based https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... Statically compiled applications (Go) that do not require libc can use the…

comment by mhio · 2024-06-30 · in Canonical's 'distroless' Linux images are a game-changer for enterprises

…to that only has the bare minimum in it?" This can be taken all the way to the distroless images ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) and means that the security team won't be asking you to fix that CVE that's in Python…

comment by shagie · 2024-06-23 · in Ruby: A great language for shell scripts

…container images. They were built by the original team that brought you Google's Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) However, there were few problems with Distroless: 1. distroless were based on Debian - which…

comment by tuananh · 2024-03-14 · in Chainguard Images now available on Docker Hub

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Language focused Docker images, minus the operating system

story by Sparkenstein · 2024-02-22 · 0 comments

…the bill. Of course, there are better choices than Alpine to optimize image size. Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) is a good example.

comment by dharmab · 2023-12-28 · in Using Alpine can make Python Docker builds 50× slower

…add unnecessary junk to your images, like a shell. It's also endorsed by Google via distroless: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by msm_ · 2023-09-20 · in Gokrazy is cool

…"distroless" before. Confusing name for a container with just main process runtimes, but neat idea. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by suprjami · 2023-07-30 · in Musl 1.2.4 adds TCP DNS fallback

If you are optimizing for image size, Alpine is not the best choice. For example, Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) has options 50% smaller than Alpine.

comment by dharmab · 2023-07-26 · in Alpine Linux does not make the news

…expect to find it in https://github.com/wolfi-dev#faq . Or maybe my google-fu failed me :( [1]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [2]: https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/issues/5507#issuecommen...

comment by aerfio · 2023-06-27 · in Wolfi: A community Linux OS designed for the container and cloud-native era

…without the entire OS as other comments mention, an example would be Googles distroless[0] [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by nigma1337 · 2023-06-27 · in Build your own Docker with Linux namespaces, cgroups, and chroot

…running a full Linux userspace a little bloated. Thankfully there are distroless base images( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ). Haven't done service dev in a while, so I don't really have experience with this, but it…

comment by sr-latch · 2023-04-30 · in MRSK: Deploy web apps anywhere

…my own images, I use distroless (gcr.io/distroless/static-debian11:nonroot), and they use 65532: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... (I tend to write go and CGO_ENABLED=0, so I typically just pick any user and…

comment by jrockway · 2023-02-09 · in Podman vs. Docker: Comparing the two containerization tools

…updated our distroless base image for a year and there isn’t even a single vulnerability (this one: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... ) In terms of defending your software supply chain, eliminating the cruft…

comment by Arbortheus · 2023-01-17 · in Major standard library changes in Go 1.20

…(Python and Node are supported but lose benefits rapidly depending on any added dependencies) https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by minimaxir · 2023-01-13 · in Alpine Linux in the Browser (2020)

…application, for example: - production flavor: uses a minimal, nonroot container base image (see: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) - debug flavor: includes few extra debug tools inside the container

comment by dgnemo · 2022-11-08 · in Ask HN: Do you use a dev container and why?

An alternative is a multi step build, then running with Google’s Distroless https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by atom_arranger · 2022-08-05 · in Minify your container

…static has: ca-certificates, /etc/passwd, /tmp directory, tzdata base has: glibc, libssl, openssl https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/main...

comment by mhio · 2022-08-03 · in Minify your container

distroless static (the smallest one, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/main... ) is about 4 MB. It contains things like: /usr/share/zoneinfo/<timezones> /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt /etc/debian_version ... not…

comment by TheDong · 2022-08-03 · in Minify your container

…redis is even a good idea anymore (outside of ensuring complete feature-set compatibility). [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [1]: https://hub.docker.com/_/scratch/ [2]: https://github.com/vercel/pkg [3]:…

comment by hardwaresofton · 2022-07-16 · in I deleted 78% of my Redis container and it still works

…I think Google's distroless container images are worth checking out as a quasi-alternative: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless You use them as a base for a docker image and copy in your server code. These images are tailor…

comment by qbasic_forever · 2022-06-23 · in Minikube now supports rootless podman driver for running Kubernetes

…copy the artifacts into distroless base images. [0] https://github.com/docker-slim/docker-slim [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by osener · 2022-03-26 · in `COPY –chmod` reduced the size of my container image by 35%

Google's debian-based distroless is fascinating: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by mst · 2022-03-22 · in Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless This is the container community’s response to this ambiguity I think.

comment by q_eng_anon · 2022-03-22 · in Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

…make use of this with multistage builds or with build systems like Bazel and Please.build. [0] - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main...

comment by gravypod · 2022-03-16 · in How to make Docker images even smaller

…don't more people use distroless? Based on debian so no musl headaches but even lighter than alpine https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by DrBenCarson · 2022-03-11 · in Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

…inputs should produce consistent outputs was fundamental to its philosophy. Build rules like https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless to create minimal, reproducible docker images would seem radical and new most people building…

comment by dub · 2022-02-06 · in Reproducible Builds in January 2022

…to this. It uses debian as the base and supports cgo because it has glibc (and openssl) [1]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by rockwotj · 2022-01-17 · in Gokrazy – A Native Go Userland

…works pretty well. It's small, fast and secure. - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by gui77aume · 2022-01-07 · in Optimizing Docker image size and why it matters

One way to simply optimize Docker image size is to use https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless Supports Go, Python, Java, out of the box.

comment by nnx · 2022-01-07 · in Optimizing Docker image size and why it matters

…you could use as a base instead which are probably still smaller than many other base images: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless#debug-ima...

comment by podge · 2022-01-06 · in Optimizing Docker image size and why it matters

…That's about 50% of the size of alpine (~5 MiB), and less than 2% of the size of debian (124 MiB). https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by miyuru · 2022-01-06 · in Optimizing Docker image size and why it matters

…[0] https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers [1] https://github.com/cilium/cilium [2] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by w7 · 2021-10-13 · in Container security best practices: Ultimate guide

…no reliance on traditional userland tools] being unquestioningly extended to other contexts.) [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by aecay · 2021-06-26 · in Understanding thread stack sizes and how Alpine is different

Related, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by nijave · 2021-06-17 · in Containers are tents

Google's distroless containers attempt to fix this issue: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by FartyMcFarter · 2021-05-02 · in “Shared libraries are not a good thing in general”

…bit more backing than this one (pretty well written) blog post, probably also check out distroless: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless I personally find most of the time alpine-based containers are more than small enough…

comment by hardwaresofton · 2021-04-22 · in Tiny Container Challenge: Building a 6kB Containerized HTTP Server

…just for the consistency. One minimal Docker option with Go is to use a "distroless" Docker image: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main...

comment by papaf · 2021-04-17 · in Ask HN: Do I need to containerize my Go service?

…don't really see that as necessary as it's quite hard to have buffer overflow bugs in go code. [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [1]: https://gvisor.dev/docs/user_guide/quick_start/docker/

comment by fishywang · 2021-04-05 · in Show HN: I wrote an HN bot to suggest HTTPS url when people post HTTP URLs

…will build an image with distroless-java plus your app: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/mast...

comment by aphexairlines · 2021-04-01 · in A categorized list of all Java and JVM features since JDK 8 to 16

…the 50mb range. But often you don't really need a real distribution inside your docker image. See https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless . But distroless is not about one specific tool or base image, it's a paradigm that…

comment by ithkuil · 2020-12-27 · in Run More Stuff in Docker

…One can set up an air-gapped environment with access to a private container registry only. [0] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless

comment by excieve · 2020-12-17 · in 51% of 4M Docker images have critical vulnerabilities

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Distroless: Language focused Docker images, minus the operating system

story by Garbage · 2020-11-19 · 0 comments

Further in that direction, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless — stripping out as much of the OS code as possible.

comment by theptip · 2020-10-15 · in Dockerfile Security Best Practices