Distroless+APT
Distroless base Docker image with a package manager (dpkg and apt) installed
Use --squash when building the image to reduce size and layers.
$ docker build --squash -t distroless-apt .
Tested with installing total 210 packages from openjdk-8-jdk.
chanseok$ docker build --squash -t distroless-apt .
...
chanseok$ docker run --rm -it distroless-apt
sh-4.4# apt-get update
sh-4.4# apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk
...
0 upgraded, 210 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 126 MB of archives.
After this operation, 558 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
...
sh-4.4# java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_212"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_212-8u212-b01-1~deb9u1-b01)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.212-b01, mixed mode)
sh-4.4# dpkg -l | head -10
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-=============================-======================-============-========================================================================
ii adduser 3.115 all add and remove users and groups
ii adwaita-icon-theme 3.22.0-1+deb9u1 all default icon theme of GNOME
ii apt 1.4.9 amd64 commandline package manager
ii at-spi2-core 2.22.0-6+deb9u1 amd64 Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (dbus core)
ii ca-certificates 20161130+nmu1+deb9u1 all Common CA certificates
However, the size is only slightly smaller than ubuntu:18.04 (although more than 20% smaller than debian:stretch), so there may not be much reason to favor Distroless+APT over Ubuntu.
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
distroless-apt latest 8e5b07028d68 6 seconds ago 78.5MB
debian stretch 2d337f242f07 2 days ago 101MB
ubuntu 18.04 94e814e2efa8 2 weeks ago 88.9MB