// Module included in the following assemblies:
//
// * architecture/understanding-development.adoc

:_mod-docs-content-type: CONCEPT
[id="base-image-options_{context}"]
= Base image options

[role="_abstract"]
The base image you choose to build your application on contains a set of
software that provides a Linux system to your application. 

When you build your own image, your software is placed into that file system and sees that file
system as though the software were looking at the operating system. 
Choosing this base image has major impact on how secure, efficient, and upgradeable your container is in the future.

Red Hat provides a new set of base images referred to as Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBIs).
These images are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and are similar to base
images that Red Hat has offered in the past, with one major difference: they
are freely redistributable without a Red Hat subscription. As a result, you can
build your application on UBI images without having to worry about how they
are shared or the need to create different images for different environments.

These UBI images have standard, init, and minimal versions. You can also use the Red Hat Software Collections
images as a foundation for applications that rely on specific runtime
environments such as Node.js, Perl, or Python. Special versions of some of
these runtime base images are referred to as Source-to-Image (S2I) images. With
S2I images, you can insert your code into a base image environment that is ready
to run that code.

S2I images are available for you to use directly from the {product-title} web UI. In the Developer perspective, you can navigate to the *+Add* view and in the *Developer Catalog* tile, view all of the available services in the Developer Catalog.

.Choose S2I base images for apps that need specific runtimes
image::developer-catalog.png[{product-title} Developer Catalog]
