Alpine Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Alpine Linux Average rating 8.9 from 53 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Alpine Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 3.23.33.22.33.21.63.20.93.19.93.18.123.17.103.16.93.15.113.14.103.13.123.12.113.10.63.6.23.2.22.7.81.10.6 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 3.23.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-03-22 Country: Portugal Votes: 4 Very lightweight distribution, without SystemD. Contrary to most comments (people assume that it is only for containers/servers), great for a daily driver. I use wayland, Labwc, and flatpaks for libreoffice, gthumbs, firefox, chrome, and even for Trezor wallet. The usual DEs are available (Gnome, KDE,...). Very fast, secure, and well organized. APK package manager is lightning fast. I switched from OpenBSD, because I was having difficulties in opening some media files, and found Alpine to be the most BSD-like Linux I found. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 3.23.2 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-15 Votes: 31 Alpine Linux is the perfect foundation for building your own Linux system. Similar to Arch Linux, only the bare essentials are pre-installed. With Alpine Linux, even less than with Arch. Depending on the intended use, the system can then be customized to your own needs by installing packages. This is not for beginners, but will be a lot of fun for experienced users. In addition to use on servers, it can also be used without restriction as a desktop system. It's best to set it up as a secondary system at first and tinker with it until everything fits. Be sure to document everything along the way. Then it will be wonderfully reproducible to install later on. Alpine Linux is a secure and lean alternative in the jungle of Linux distributions. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 3.23.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-07 Votes: 23 Desktop review. Been using Alpine on 4 laptops for the past 5+ years. Its important to understand Alpine is not just some minimal server/docker/minimal hardware distro. It functions very well as a desktop system. PRO Minimal install and expand from there. Very nice to observe and control what packages are installed from the minimal base and then beyond. You start with a basic install of a few packages and then expand from there to a full desktop. Installing only what you want, or opt for a defined desktop install. My personal choice is XFCE; installing fully custom to my choice, as well as using Alpine defined XFCE install. Similar to any other linux install, fully functional everyday desktop, everything works; usb connections, sound, wifi... Applications in the repository; firefox and other browsers, libreoffice, pdf viewers... Trustworthy and competent distro maintainers and developers. Never had an issue with system upgrades. Doesnt seem to be much Alpine application code modification over the base code. NO systemd; openrc init. CON Being MUSL based, there are glibc based applications that may not run in Alpine. Alpine application repositories are limited in what they provide; included are applications for an expanded functioning system, but NOT every possible application such that might be found in Debian or similar distro. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 53 reader reviews of Alpine Linux...