Users should be able to choose between the two OSes

Feb 11, 2016 02:05 GMT  ·  By

If you've been reading the news lately, you may have heard rumors that Docker founders hired the developer of Alpine Linux, a small, text-based distribution, to move the official Docker images away from the Ubuntu infrastructure.

Now, while those rumors were meanwhile partially confirmed by Docker, in the way that they indeed hired Alpine Linux's Natanael Copa, they came as a surprise to Canonical, who apparently had no idea what was going on, despite the fact that they have an active partnership with Docker Inc.

PCWorld's Katherine Noyes got in touch with Docker's spokeswoman Suzanne Panoplos to find out what is happening. From the email exchange between Docker and PCWorld, it would appear that Docker has no plans to ditch Ubuntu in favor of Alpine Linux, the latter becoming an optional offering to existing and new Docker users (besides Ubuntu, of course).

"To clarify, we are 'expanding' our offering, rather than 'switching' it from Ubuntu to Alpine," Panoplos said for PCWorld. "Docker is now providing images based on Alpine Linux, in addition to Ubuntu and Debian, as another option for users. Ultimately this provides users with more choice when selecting their image content."

No need to worry, you'll be able to use both Ubuntu and Alpine Linux with Docker

Dustin Kirkland, Canonical's business and technical point of contact with Docker Inc., and Product Manager for Ubuntu Server, was quite devastated to find out the shocking news from the media, so he wrote a quite lengthy article to inform Docker about some essential facts before deciding to ditch Ubuntu.

He goes as far as to ask, "And so I ask you honestly...what do you want to see? How would you like to see Docker and Ubuntu operate together?" Well, of course we love to see Ubuntu operating together with Docker, there's no doubt about that, but it seems to us that Canonical needs not worry about Docker ditching Ubuntu in favor of Alpine Linux.