Docker already recommends the tiny 5MB Alpine distro as the default for all containers, they hired Alpine's creator Natanael Copa[2]. Alpine is minimal but still has an awesome package manager[1], is maintained/proven/solid and provides a great UX as a container OS.
So what is my advantage of distroless vs Alpine besides the 5MB? Feels a bit like reinventing the wheel or I missed something.
Some folks solve this by adding glibc to Alpine (IIUC this is what Envoy is building upon).
It has a package manager, but it is far from as comprehensive. The security database is still essentially an experiment with much less richness than Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat, ...
If what you want is a package manager, you probably want minideb from the Bitnami folks.
I can point you at the various fixes for things I've reported since this first became available, but given your skepticism I'm sure it would not help since he seems to exclusively use the changeset description: "[add] various fixes" with no attribution.
Some folks solve this by adding glibc to Alpine (IIUC this is what Envoy is building upon).
It has a package manager, but it is far from as comprehensive. The security database is still essentially an experiment with much less richness than Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat, ...
If what you want is a package manager, you probably want minideb from the Bitnami folks.