This is a timely post! We're actually working on merging Distroless with Alpine for the best of both worlds. You can check out some of the progress in Apko and the new Distroless GitHub org.

https://github.com/chainguard-dev/apko http://github.com/distroless

Blog post: https://blog.chainguard.dev/introducing-apko-bringing-distro...

Disclosure: I helped start the Distroless project years ago and now work at Chainguard.