Currently, We at Astronomer maintain and support Docker images based on 2 Linux flavors, which are:
- Debian
- Alpine
One of the most frequent questions which we have come across from several users is the difference between these 2 Docker images.
Hence listing down points to select according to your requirement.
Debian(Buster) pros:
- vastly larger dev & user community
- more packages
- more testing
- more derived distributions
- more likely to still be in robust health in 10 years
- working towards reproducible builds
- better documentation
- libc(glibc in case of Debian)more compatible than musl, less likely to trigger bugs.
- more trustworthy infrastructure
- Debian is common base OS for bare metal, virtual machines, and docker
Alpine pros:
- lighter: community obsessed with footprint
- musl: more efficient libc alternative
- simpler init system: OpenRC instead of systemd
Alpine: https://hub.docker.com/_/alpine?tab=description
Buster: https://www.debian.org/distrib/
Note: Alpine Linux predates Docker, having been first released in 2005, one year after Ubuntu appeared on the scene.
Link for latest images:
https://www.astronomer.io/docs/airflow-versioning/