Ubuntu 18.04 Minimal Spin Down To ~30MB Compressed / ~81MB On Disk

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 18.04 Minimal Spin Down To ~30MB Compressed / ~81MB On Disk

For those using Ubuntu Minimal images for containers/Docker, assembling your own base distribution, setting up an embedded Linux environment, or related use-cases, the minimal images for the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release will be even smaller...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-18.04-Minimal-Is-Smaller

[GraysonPeddie]

30MB for a minimal CD? Very impressive! And up to 84MB for disk with no man pages and documentation! Why would anyone want to have that small of a minimal CD for container/Docker? OpenStack? Kubernetes? Or maybe have UniFi Controller or Home Assistant (for automating home automation devices such as Hue and Venstar Thermostat) in containers? Space is cheap and it would make sense to get 128GB M.2 for about $80 and install it in a Mini-ITX motherboard, assuming that the SFF motherboards should have enough room for just a single M.2 slot.

[Jumbotron]

I know next to nothing about container architecture and performance...but I could imagine you wanting such a small footprint when you scale each instance into the hundreds if not thousands of containers. Definitely getting it that small makes it good for embedded stuff. Think Snaps installs on embedded platforms. And when the Linux Kernel is a Snap as well you have a full stack from kernel on up to be used as an embedded platform.

[starshipeleven]

30MB for a minimal CD? Very impressive! And up to 84MB for disk with no man pages and documentation! Why would anyone want to have that small of a minimal CD for container/Docker? OpenStack? Kubernetes? Or maybe have UniFi Controller or Home Assistant (for automating home automation devices such as Hue and Venstar Thermostat) in containers? Space is cheap and it would make sense to get 128GB M.2 for about $80 and install it in a Mini-ITX motherboard, assuming that the SFF motherboards should have enough room for just a single M.2 slot.

It's for VM or embedded usage. Embedded devices very rarely have more than 1 GB of internal flash unless they are using Android or similar.

And for "embedded" I mean devices that cost less than 200$ and whose internal storage does not need any performance at all as it will live in RAM and not see much writes.

VMs and containers are basically "fat applications", in the sense that when you need more performance you "power up" more VMs and containers, while when you don't need them you "power off" them. And this allows to scale fast and answer to peaks in demand, and for cloud providers to maximize the utilization of the servers (i.e. maximize the $$$ they get from their clients while reducing the costs from having many servers that sit idle doing nothing)

In neither case you want/need documentation or any frills, and space is NOT cheap.

[Steffo]

30MB for a minimal CD? Very impressive! And up to 84MB for disk with no man pages and documentation! Why would anyone want to have that small of a minimal CD for container/Docker? OpenStack? Kubernetes? Or maybe have UniFi Controller or Home Assistant (for automating home automation devices such as Hue and Venstar Thermostat) in containers? Space is cheap and it would make sense to get 128GB M.2 for about $80 and install it in a Mini-ITX motherboard, assuming that the SFF motherboards should have enough room for just a single M.2 slot.

For virtual machines or embedded stuff.
My company is a medical device manufacturer. We don't deliver any lib or program which we don't need. This has also something to do with security.

[caligula]

Not that impressive compared to Alpine Linux.

[Redfoxmoon]

Not that impressive compared to Alpine Linux.

But unlike Alpine, Ubuntu actually works, and doesn't do funny nonsense when you update it :^)

[AJenbo]

Not that impressive compared to Alpine Linux.

Biggest problem with Alipine is that you can't install locals so it's only good for applications that don't need localization.

[happymellon]

30MB for a minimal CD? Very impressive! And up to 84MB for disk with no man pages and documentation! Why would anyone want to have that small of a minimal CD for container/Docker? OpenStack? Kubernetes? Or maybe have UniFi Controller or Home Assistant (for automating home automation devices such as Hue and Venstar Thermostat) in containers? Space is cheap and it would make sense to get 128GB M.2 for about $80 and install it in a Mini-ITX motherboard, assuming that the SFF motherboards should have enough room for just a single M.2 slot.

Docker is used as RAID for applications and space is time, and time is money in the enterprise.

If I have orchestrated a collection of containers, if one dies then another spins up. The larger the image the longer it takes for Docker to clone the image to that instance and then start it. When you are wanting your services to respond in seconds, waiting 2 seconds for the instance to clone because you went 100 megs rather than 30, or 5 Mb for your service to clone is terrible for availability.

[Adarion]

It can "always" be smaller. I bet with a Gentoo or LFS, trimmed down, adjusted kernel config, everything compiled with -Os you might get further down. But then of course, you will lack functionality. So ~31 / 80 MiB is a good number - especially if you can actually use it afterwards.

By the way MS-DOS 6.0 was iirc. roughly 4 to 6 MiB on my HDD back in the days. And I bet CP/M was smaller AND it was some kind of OS.