Minimus container images
Ranked 4 of 5 container base images by recommenders
Free, hardened container base images with few known vulnerabilities, FIPS and STIG variants, and an SBOM per build. Critics doubt the vulnerability claims and warn of supply-chain risk.
Free, hardened container base images with few known vulnerabilities, FIPS and STIG variants, and an SBOM per build. Critics doubt the vulnerability claims and warn of supply-chain risk.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 38%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Free with no signup or trial
“happy to hear that the image is free to the community, what a great contribution”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “I really appreciate y'all not putting STIG/FIPS behind the paywall.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “It's a library of near 0 CVE images available to use for free.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” - Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free”
Few vulnerabilities, smaller attack surface
“The value we provide is a minimalistic architecture so you start with a significantly smaller attack surface”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “It's a library of near 0 CVE images available to use for free.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “reduce your vulnerabilities by 97%+ on average”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” Offloads hard image maintenance work
“The whole value of the product is helping them avoid all the risk and work associated with poorly maintained container images.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “a packaging service with greater traceability and velocity than the rando images on docker hub”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “Many others find it useful to have someone else doing the commoditized but hard work”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” Transparent SBOM for every build
“we try to be as transparent as possible with a cryptographically verifiable SBOM for every build of every image”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “a packaging service with greater traceability and velocity than the rando images on docker hub”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as a central target for attacks
“Maybe it's their business model? Sell to bunch of people and hook them in, then "get hacked", whoops sorry.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “you're just yet another liability - one single service to hack all your "safe" images”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “Isn't there a slight risk of upstream attacks being amplified by this?”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” - Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free”
Vulnerability claims questioned
“You surely mean "without known and reported vulnerabilities". I doubt you're proactively fixing the world across thousands of software packages”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “it takes away from the offering when they try to prop up the vuln count for the official images”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” Blocks info page on mobile browsers
“Completely blocking the image information page to mobile user agents is completely unnecessary.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “blocking it instead of just showing a desktop page feels absurd”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” Stale or duplicated front page content
“some items on the main page are duplicated, which could be confusing”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free” “on front page the nginx container is 6 days old, so no daily builds”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Minimus container images are now free”
Other container base images people recommend
The four most recommended other container base images, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StageX | 12 | 5 | 71% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Docker Hardened Images | 11 | 14 | 44% | 4 | — | — |
| Chainguard Images | 9 | 25 | 26% | 4 | — | — |
| Minimus container imagesThis page | 6 | 10 | 38% | 3 | — | — |
| Distroless container images | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“happy to hear that the image is free to the community, what a great contribution”
“I really appreciate y'all not putting STIG/FIPS behind the paywall.”
“If you want a shell and package manager and some common busybox applets, -dev variants are the best option.”
“take the -dev version of our PHP image and run a build from that to add whatever you need on top of that hardened base”
“Super valuable for contribution to all businesses”
“it takes away from the offering when they try to prop up the vuln count for the official images”
“The value we provide is a minimalistic architecture so you start with a significantly smaller attack surface”
“Many others find it useful to have someone else doing the commoditized but hard work”
“Not that I disagree, just a workaround.”
“The whole value of the product is helping them avoid all the risk and work associated with poorly maintained container images.”
“Maybe it's their business model? Sell to bunch of people and hook them in, then "get hacked", whoops sorry.”
“Supply chain attack waiting to happen”
“you're just yet another liability - one single service to hack all your "safe" images”
“reduce your vulnerabilities by 97%+ on average”
“You surely mean "without known and reported vulnerabilities". I doubt you're proactively fixing the world across thousands of software packages”
“It's a library of near 0 CVE images available to use for free.”
“blocking it instead of just showing a desktop page feels absurd”
“Isn't there a slight risk of upstream attacks being amplified by this?”
“a packaging service with greater traceability and velocity than the rando images on docker hub”
“Completely blocking the image information page to mobile user agents is completely unnecessary.”
“we try to be as transparent as possible with a cryptographically verifiable SBOM for every build of every image”
“we have more images than DHI, we have FIPS images available freely, and all our images are built from source on a distroless base”
“These are truly free… no auth wall, no signup, no trial”
“on front page the nginx container is 6 days old, so no daily builds”
“some items on the main page are duplicated, which could be confusing”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.