Reader supplied reviews for Alpine Linux
Average rating
9.1 from 31 review(s)
Version: 3.19.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-01-10
Votes: 17
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[MAIN IMPRESSION]
1. A lImited resource server must!
2. Might be considered as a succinct Desktop candidate.
[MORE DETAILS]
3. apk is very efficient. Though I feel a little not that accustomed, what I mostly used to use was rpm and dnf. Comparing these two, apk should have much more complete user interface, like rpm -qf
4. rc-* tools take the place of systemctl, don't know why they should be prefixed with rc-.
5. setup-desktop should involve font-* packages, at least the font-terminus package, so that the default installation of desktop will not be launched without displaying any text.
6. Desktop environment should depend on some essential packages that seriously impact the initial usage: sudo, etc.
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Version: 3.18.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-09-12
Votes: 107
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Security focused. Lightweight. Lightweight dependencies. Very stable. Not for new users. Choice of init system, all pros.
Alpine is used in many containers, so actual use is much larger because of Docker.
apt is the best rep tool I've ever used, and I have used RPM, YAST, YUM, Apt-get, emerge, and portage to name a few.
The edge repo has all the latest software and tools.
The installer could be a little better, and the minimal root file system could be a little more complete.
Alpine makes setting up a wifi router/firewall dirt simple on a small embedded computer like a nanoPi or Pi zeroW.
The last time I was this impressed was back when Ubuntu was on version 7 or 8, back when the LTS was rock solid stable. I had just encountered rpm hell with Fedora and decided if the package manager was this bad, I wanted out. When the Precise release came out and was so buggy, I switched to debian, and when debian went to systemd, I went to devuan, but wasn't really satisfied, so tried Antix, but conman was broken on multiple releases, so I eventually tried Alpine and haven't looked back yet.
The only downfall of Alpine (which makes it secure) is that it is musl based, so I run chroots of debian to use glibc based applications. It's pretty simple using debootstrap to build a chroot. It also isolates glibc applications in a chroot. I've personally experienced the bloat, insanity, and bugginess that comes with glibc. Look for the 8,000 line patch made by a Red Hat developer to glibc to fix an overlapped memcpy in an Adobe flash player. I found it because it caused a 24x slowdown in one of our memcpy functions.
It would be nice to see more musl based distros and applications.
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Version: 3.18.3
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-09-11
Votes: 4
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Nice overall distribution. Simple in ideology and execution.
For me personally the issue is with the musl libs. You simply can't get all of the apps that you need and will often find yourself struggling with missing libraries which are not present in the musl library collection. Personally I use Signal on daily basis and it's simply not available via the musl libraries due to some missing lib dependencies. This can extend to many other apps depending on what you are using it could be a deal breaker.
So I would recommend researching your "must have" apps availability in the musl ecosystem before diving into this head first cause you might find that there are limitations there.
Void linux for example solves this by offering both a libc and musl versions of their distro, it would be nice if Alpine did the same. But that's just my take on things.
Overall tho it's a pretty nonsense-free distribution and if you don't mind some of the musl shortcomings then I'm sure you'll appreciate it's simplicity and stability.
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See all 31 reader reviews of Alpine Linux...
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