Support for Linux Distros Update #10074
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So every .NET container will now include extra cruft from Ubuntu. Application containers are intentionally run on the minimally supported OS, possibly with extras baked in, before adding runtime tools (if necessary) and the application. Whenever possible, one wants to run scratch! Otherwise, Alpine. Otherwise, something heaver, etc., etc... In the extreme case, Debian. Now by default every container will be Ubuntu. Unbelievable. |
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We publish Ubuntu Chiseled (distroless) base images that do precisely this. |
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ChatGPT told me this about app containers for other major runtimes/SDKs:
We use a combination of alpine and debian. Please confirm (because it wasn't immediately clear): are you saying that you used to publish alpine and debian, but from now will publish alpine, ubuntu server and ubuntu server chiseled? That would be fine for our use case. |
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@lonix1 You can see all the platforms that we publish images for in the supported platforms documentation. To answer your question directly, for .NET 8 and 9 we published images for the following OS families:
For .NET 10+, we are not shipping Debian - everything else remains the same. |
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I think there is some confusion. Debian is also the default for golang images. It's because golang is an official image and all official images have Debian as the default. Your table largely demonstrates the policies of the official image builders, which we have followed until this point. Go images: https://hub.docker.com/_/golang (clarifies that Debian images are the default) I also updated the intro to make clear that there is no change to Alpine images. We added support for Alpine for the exact reason of publishing container images. Alpine is great and we have also appreciated our interactions with Alpine folks. |
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@lonix1 Interesting table, which shows Debian is the standard. |
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The .NET Team provides support for a broad set of Linux distros. That is not changing. We made some decisions that in the last year that deserve mention to ensure that everyone understands our approach. We expect that this posting won't matter for most users.
Key decisions:
See Platforms for .NET 10 container images for more information on .NET 10 plans. No changes are being made to Alpine images. Alpine images have been published with every .NET 10 preview and that will continue after GA.
The following sections go into more detail. The first two decisions collapse down to a single explanation.
Debian container support
Debian is an excellent Linux distribution and has been a great workhorse for .NET. It also remains supported and we encourage .NET developers to use it. The only change is that we will not produce Debian container images starting with Trixie.
We realized that Debian wasn't a good choice for our default container images because both it and .NET have a 3 year support schedule (for mainline support) and Debian ships first. For example, that means that Debian Bookworm will transition into its EOL phase before .NET 8 does. We have previously encouraged users to upgrade to the next Debian version in similar cases. We should have realized and resolved this problem a long time ago, in retrospect. Sorry about that.
Once we decided to make Ubuntu our default image style, we then concluded that there was not a pressing reason to produce Debian images, since Debian and Ubuntu are very similar. This thinking applied to all .NET versions. It is also the case that upgrading from Debian Bookworm to Trixie has about the same ccompatibilityconcern as upgrading to Ubuntu Noble. LTS -> LTS should not be considered a "safe in-place upgrade" for Linux distributions.
As in past releases, we will continue to publish .NET 8 on Debian Bookworm after Bookworm EOL. Doing anything different would be a massive breaking change. Users can move to our .NET 8 Ubuntu Noble images (which we've been publishing since 2024) or produce their own Debian Trixie images.
Over the past few years, we have worked closely with Canonical and have completed key projects with them (packages and chiseled images). This relationship and the long Ubuntu LTS duration were key factors in deciding to choose Ubuntu as our default image. An additional factor is supply chain security. Canonical delivers the base images we use directly to Azure, resulting in no break in custody between the two organizations. We think that is valuable.
glibc / Ubuntu targeting
We adopted a new Linux build methodology with .NET 8, where we build the native components of .NET using a modern distro, modern tools, and header files acquired from an old Ubuntu distro. Each release, we announce these combinations.
Our plan is to bump the Ubuntu version we target to a newer Ubuntu LTS on average every two years. .NET 8 targets 16.04, .NET 9 targets 18.04, and .NET 10 targets 18.04. .NET 11 will target Ubuntu 20.04. .NET 12 will target 20.04 or 22.04.
This approach has a lot of benefits. Most of our build system is very modern, however, it enables users to run .NET apps on old deployments should they need to. Enablement is not the same as Support (capital "S" support). For example, .NET 10 is commercially supported on Ubuntu 22.04+, not on Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04.
We recently had a conversation on whether we would drop OpenSSL 1.x support. OpenSSL 1.x to 3.x was an ecosystem-wide update and forms a sort of Linux compatibility epoch. We decided that we'd hold off until at least .NET 12 until making that change. Either way, we'll drop OpenSSL 1.x support (small "s" support) when we switch to targeting Ubuntu 22.04 in our build. We haven't decided that yet and won't entertain that discussion for another year.
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