Ace the ITGSS DevOps Challenge 2026 – Elevate Your Engineering Game!

Distroless images are designed to be minimalistic, focusing solely on containing the application and its runtime environment without the overhead of additional tools or utilities that are typically found in standard operating system images.

The exclusion of package managers and shells is fundamental to the concept of distroless images. By omitting these components, distroless images minimize security vulnerabilities and reduce the attack surface, as there are fewer components that could be exploited by an attacker. This approach aligns with best practices in containerization, where less is often more, leading to more efficient and secure deployments.

The other characteristics listed do not align well with the concept of distroless images. For instance, including extensive tools for debugging and having a larger size are contrary to the minimalist philosophy of distroless containers, which aim for efficiency and security rather than a feature-rich environment. Similarly, containing an extensive set of system packages conflicts with the core idea of including only what is absolutely necessary for the application to run.