Minimalist base environment, based on Ubuntu/CentOS. In each version of the base distribution you will get enabled:
Locales support
BASH as default shell interpreter
Full set of APT/RPM utils.
The base layer is basically for non-interactive (without terminal and shell) use. This base layer is useful:
as a base for fast installing and running application in your own environments, because of enabled by default distribution's packages repositories. In CentOS out-of-box enabled: Enterprise Linux Repo, which will give you access to the latest version and wide variety of software not available or not enabled by default. In Ubuntu out-of-box enabled: restricted, universe and multiverse repositories.
It's convenient to run locale dependent applications such as PostgreSQL (#1). First of all the application will use your locale in cases of data inputs, default collates and outputs it's
message and logs.