I think Ubuntu is a popular base image in Docker because Ubuntu is popular for engineers to use on their desktops
Debian usually passes for Ubuntu, since the package names are mostly the same.
So either you do all your development in containers, or you have drift between the dev environment and the cloud.
Ubuntu passes for Debian, you mean. Debian has been around much, much longer than Ubuntu and set the standards Ubuntu got for free and commercialized.
What I mean is that people just hack on stuff on their desktop. They install Python NumPy or Rails or whatever. Like gigabytes of dependencies.
And then they want to deploy.
Is it easy to do that with Flatcar Container Linux? How do I do it?
Or is it easier to make a Docker file that does apt-get install X and pip install Y ?
You can do that with Ubuntu as a base image, and Debian usually "just works" if you're on Ubuntu. (I'm doing this with our Debian CI images)
Not saying you should always take the easier path, but I also think it's a good idea to minimize the differences between the dev environment and production
Flatcar releases are tied to git commits in our distro automation repo; so to develop for Flatcar, one would:
1. clone the distro automation repo
2. check out the release version one wants to develop for (tag or branch)
3. starts the SDK container via a wrapper script in the repo
This enables Flatcar development across all distros that run git, and docker or podman (it even works on WSL if one is inclined to use it that way).
More information here: https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/reference/developer-guid...