diff --git a/.dockerignore b/.dockerignore
index a225db57..09c27453 100644
--- a/.dockerignore
+++ b/.dockerignore
@@ -36,7 +36,8 @@ var/
 *.egg-info/
 .installed.cfg
 *.egg
+site
 
 # Virtual environment
 .env
-venv/
+**/.venv/
diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 949060b1..b157d144 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -2,10 +2,10 @@
 # builder: install needed dependencies and setup virtual environment
 ####################################################################################################
 
-ARG PYTHON_VERSION=3.12
-FROM python:${PYTHON_VERSION}-slim-bookworm AS builder
+ARG PYTHON_VERSION=3.11
+FROM python:${PYTHON_VERSION}-bookworm AS builder
 
-ARG POETRY_VERSION=1.6
+ARG POETRY_VERSION=1.8
 ARG INSTALL_EXTRAS
 
 ENV POETRY_NO_INTERACTION=1 \
@@ -16,20 +16,14 @@ ENV POETRY_NO_INTERACTION=1 \
     POETRY_HOME="/opt/poetry" \
     PATH="$POETRY_HOME/bin:$PATH"
 
-RUN apt-get update \
-    && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y build-essential \
-    && apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
-    && pip install --no-cache-dir poetry==$POETRY_VERSION
+RUN pip install --no-cache-dir poetry==$POETRY_VERSION
 
 WORKDIR /app
 COPY poetry.lock pyproject.toml ./
 
 RUN poetry install --without dev --no-root --extras "${INSTALL_EXTRAS}"  \
     && poetry run pip install --no-cache-dir "torch>=2.0,<3.0" --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu \
-    && poetry run pip install --no-cache-dir "lightning[pytorch]" \
-    && rm -rf $POETRY_CACHE_DIR \
-    && pip cache purge \
-    && apt-get purge -y --auto-remove build-essential
+    && poetry run pip install --no-cache-dir "lightning[pytorch]<3.0"
 
 ####################################################################################################
 # runtime: used for running the udf vertices
@@ -37,7 +31,7 @@ RUN poetry install --without dev --no-root --extras "${INSTALL_EXTRAS}"  \
 FROM python:${PYTHON_VERSION}-slim-bookworm AS runtime
 
 RUN apt-get update \
-    && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y dumb-init \
+    && apt-get install dumb-init \
     && apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
     && apt-get purge -y --auto-remove