Proposed Shift to Minimalist Linux Distro for K8S JupyterHub VMs

Hello. This is a cross-post of an issue that has already been described here. It was suggested that I may wish to bring up this issue here.

During recent review of the nodes in our K8S JupyterHub clusters, I've identified some areas where we could potentially optimize performance. I've observed that our current Ubuntu VMs appear to carry some excess in terms of services and software. Notably, services like CUPS (used for printing) and unused packages such as openjdk seem to be utilizing more space and processing power than we actually need.

Considering this, I'd like to put forth a suggestion for us to discuss: How about we explore the possibility of creating a “Featured” JS2 VM based on a more minimalist Linux distribution? I'm not entirely versed in all Linux distros, so I'm open to suggestions. The aim here would be to more precisely tailor these VMs to the specific requirements of a JupyterHub K8s node, thereby reducing unnecessary load. I am betting this is a common JS2 use case for users running JupyterHub clusters on Jetstream.