Difference between Debian cloud images: openstack/generic/genericcloud
I'm trying to understand the differences in content and support status of
Debian cloud images found here [1]. It seems to me that Openstack, generic and
genericcloud serve more or less the same purpose - and I'm failing to
understand when to use which.
Here is what I've gathered so far:
- Openstack image seems to be the go to one for all use cases, even outside of
Openstack deployments. It also has a more "official" vibe to it, being
grouped into the same section as CD/DVD installer images at this page [2]
- Generic and genericcloud images are listed under "misc and unofficial stuff"
at [2] and provide no stable URLs for the latest build - that suggests these
images are somehow inferior to the Openstack ones.
- Image size differs drastically between Openstack (535M) and generic (285M),
genericcloud (222M) images. Package list diffs show that openstack adds
some packages like aptitude, python2.7 and firmware-linux-free - but I'm not
sure that those are enough to account for the twice larger size, especially
since generic/genericcloud add some packages too (bridge-utils, curl,
chrony, man-db, manpages, ethtool, etc). Maybe there are some differences in
the build process?
- The only difference between generic and genericcloud seems to be the kernel:
linux-image-amd64 in generic and linux-image-cloud-amd64 in genericcloud.
For some reason the -cloud kernel is significantly smaller, even though
package description [3] makes no mention of omitted modules (drivers?)
My use case is pretty simple: I'm just looking for a base image to spawn new
virtual machines under libvirt/kvm with cloud-init. I'm inclined to go with
smaller genericcloud images, but I'm a little worried that there are some
hidden footguns I'm not aware of. Wiki page [4] has no mention of generic
cloud images, could someone knowledgeable explain the differences please?
[1]: http://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/
[2]: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/
[3]: https://packages.debian.org/buster/linux-image-4.19.0-16-cloud-amd64
[4]: https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/
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