Daily-driving Alpine Linux

Does anyone here ever uses Alpine Linux for desktop or server usage? It always fascinates me for how lightweight is (I ran it on laptops older than 2006), but it's hell of a mess to setup for desktop usage (I never tried it on servers, or at least, seriously). Can you give me some advices or link some guide to let it be 100% working, especially with glibc-based programs? Feel free to not help, I won't start distro wars, I just want someone to give me a hand. ^^

Sorry I just run Devuan and I don't anything simpler than that. Using musl for desktop is probably not the smartest decision. I think it was meant more for minimal systems where gnu bloat isn't welcome

>>81871 >using musl for desktop mate you wot. musl is a libc. An end user doesn't use a libc. A better question is do enough expected programs build against musl with the features a desktop user wants. The real question is does Alpine have the features a desktop user wants. Alpine actually has an installable glibc and some programs that require it. I was able to build a VM with X11, Firefox and Alpine I was browsing just fine out of for a while. Your needs may vary.

>>81870 I have used it for 2 years, and still use it for some of my servers. You are not gonna run into much issues, other than programs maybe not working nicely with musl. Steam, for example, will not work. Busybox might be a small thorn in your side, as the tools it provide are pretty minimal. Also, Alpine provides a very simple 'setup-xorg-base' script to automatically do most of the work for desktop usage for you. All you need to do after that is some minor configuration, setting up a wm or de, making sure X launches that process. Highly recommend it though

>>81870 Alpine is mostly used for container workloads and many services offer alpine images. You can gather a lot of information on how to build packages by analyzing dockerfiles

>>81873 > I have used it for 2 years, and still use it for some of my servers. > You are not gonna run into much issues, other than programs maybe not working nicely with musl. Steam, for example, will not work. > Busybox might be a small thorn in your side, as the tools it provide are pretty minimal. > Also, Alpine provides a very simple 'setup-xorg-base' script to automatically do most of the work for desktop usage for you. All you need to do after that is some minor configuration, setting up a wm or de, making sure X launches that process. > Highly recommend it though It does also offer a "setup-desktop" command which lets you choose various desktops and automatically setup annoying tasks such as udev rules. There is a "gcompat" package for glibc-based programs too. However, it doesn't seem to work with 100% of all programs (for example, AppImages and tarballs don't work). Steam doesn't exist as a native package, it can be installed through Flatpak (although I have no Steam account, long live to physical copies!). Flatpak itself is a good package system but still, it doesn't offer any program needed, and it's tailored mainly for graphical programs.

I use it on ARM so I don't expect proprietary soykaf to run anyways. Using musl has about the same impact as having non-x86 hardware or using a libre distro, perhaps even less because *some* software can run with gcompat as said by lainons above. >>81872 Alpine at least has the advantage of a faster release schedule and Alpine's apk is also a whole lot faster and cleaner of a package manager than apt. Devuan has more packages available though, I concede. Overall I think it's very usable as a desktop, I don't see much the point of running a middle ground mixture of proprietary and free software, if I wanted to run proprietary software I would use Windows instead. >Can you give me some advices or link some guide to let it be 100% working https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Main_Page (It also uses openrc so things might be configured on a similar fashion) https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page (Just ignore the systemd soykaf)

>>81896 > Overall I think it's very usable as a desktop, I don't see much the point of running a middle ground mixture of proprietary and free software, if I wanted to run proprietary software I would use Windows instead. What do you mean? I didn't mention that I need glibc compatibility for proprietary software... > https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Main_Page > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Main_Page (It also uses openrc so things might be configured on a similar fashion) > https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page (Just ignore the systemd soykaf) I keep hearing the word "soykaf" too much and I don't know it's meaning. XD By the way, I'm aware of the official and the other two wikis, but: - The Alpine wiki itself is know to be poorly curated, it lacks of troubleshooting; - Gentoo wiki is good, but only for OpenRC (they are the ones who made it, after all); - Arch wiki is good but just for "general" Linux operating systems usage. Thank you for the effort anyway! ^^

>>81897 >What do you mean? I didn't mention that I need glibc compatibility for proprietary software... I haven't had any other issues with musl other than locales being weird >I keep hearing the word "soykaf" too much and I don't know it's meaning. XD This site has a language enhancer that turns sH1t into soykaf >Arch wiki is good but just for "general" Linux operating systems usage. Setting up a desktop is not that much different across distros in my experience. I should have also mentioned that Alpine lacks manpages by default but they can all be installed automatically with the "mandoc" and "docs" packages if they help you.

I used to run it on a couple servers for a while. My only real complaint is that I don't like openrc and would prefer s6 or systemd. S6 actually seems like a perfect fit for Alpine and I'm kind of surprised it isn't an official option. These days those servers run nixos or flatcar, but that's due to an overarching change in my approach to config/admin more than any fault with alpine. It would actually still be my distro of choice for getting the most out of cheap VPS hosts. I feel like the main reason nobody uses alpine on workstations is that it has a pretty narrow niche where it's actually going to be your first choice. Most desktops would be better off with something like gentoo or void or one of the Arch derivatives, which can be configured to have most of Alpine's advantages but are also a lot more flexible and easy to hack on. Alpine seems like a good fit for an old netbook or tablet or something that you want to be lightweight but also extremely low maintenance.

>>81870 > Can you give me some advices or link some guide to let it be 100% working, especially with glibc-based programs? For programs that are built with glibc, you can use a compatibility layer There is a wiki article on options for running glibc programs. > https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Running_glibc_programs You can also use Flatpaks. If a piece of software isn't built as a Flatpak, you can try to build it yourself from source: > https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/building.html Finally, you can use .deb packages on Alpine, as it supports dpkg. There may be some compatibility issues if the package uses glibc, which can be (hopefully) addressed by the above options for using glibc. > https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/594431 There is also a guide on installing Alpine as a desktop system. > https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-04-30-alpine-as-desktop-cheatsheet.html In my experience, Alpine is very usable. The setup scripts worked fine to get me into a working Wayland desktop with Sway. I had a few minor issues getting PulseWire and audio working, as well as getting Waybar to work with Sway. Once I solved those issues the system was (and is) very stable. Your experience may be different if you use a more fully featured desktop environment like MATE or the like. I also like that the process for building a package is very simple - set up your environment, configure the sdk and the like, and modify the template APKBUILD file with your specific build options. It means that if you want to port software to Alpine, the barrier to entry is very low. With that said, if you like to tinker with your system, you may want to use something different like Gentoo. If you just want a system you can deploy and forget about and have working when you come back to it and need to do work, Alpine is a very solid option. >>81877 > Steam doesn't exist as a native package, it can be installed through Flatpak (although I have no Steam account, long live to physical copies!). Guide for installing Steam as a Flatpak, and fixing some errors: > https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Steam Also, in place of physical copies, you could always buy games off GOG (or pirate them, I suppose) and save them (and the installer) on DVD's. A bit less viable now that game sizes are in the 100's of GiB, but that's what repacks are for.

>>81917 >At the end of the day I wrote “Thanks!” to Poettering email and went for a sleep. Unfortunately he never received it because you forgot to enable dbus.

>>81899 >This site has a language enhancer that turns sH1t into soykaf Let's try: soykaf.

>>81870 I run alpine on my laptop, I don't use a full desktop, only X11 with a window manager so can't help much with that running glibc programs sometimes works with gcompat but other times you have to use a chroot

>>81917 >At the end of the day I wrote “Thanks!” to Poettering email and went for a sleep. based and appreciated

>>81986 (me) >I use it on ARM so I don't expect proprietary soykaf to run anyways. Actually I take it back, Alpine on ARM has the advantage of running Android software thanks to the work done by the postmarketOS devs to make waydroid work. I'm in fact posting from Tor Browser for Android on waydroid and it works flawlessly, it for the kind of an awkard UI tho. If somebody wants to try it, adding psi=1 to /boot/cmdline.txt is needed to make waydroid work.

>>81870 >hell of a mess to setup for desktop usage `setup-alpine` from a live usb, reboot, `setup-desktop gnome`, reboot. It's almost as easy as using `archinstall`. >working, especially with glibc-based programs Use distrobox or flatpak. Sometimes the `gcompat` package can provide what you need but doesn't work all the time.

>>81902 >s6 There seems to have been an effort by alpine maintainers to switch from openrc to s6 since 2021 but it has likely stalled by now. The packages are all present though. I boot into s6-linux-init with handwritten services on my home server.

i've been dailying alpine for a couple months now, switched from freebsd bc soykafy drivers it's pretty much the same thing as void, but usually has more up to date pkgs in the rolling/edge repo >glibc programs flatpak if possible, otherwise install gcompat

>>81870 >Does anyone here ever uses Alpine Linux for desktop I used to run it for like a year. The only problem was that there were some missing packages. But luckily it's easy to make a package for Alpine Linux (I just didn't want to become a maintainer). Here are my notes and tips: https://dpaste.com/5L7TE2Q6G

>>83235 How stable is edge really?

>>83245 as stable as all other rolling distros, if not more never had to manually intervene with anything, even with a custom init system instead of openrc

>>81870 I daily drive Alpine Linux, it's an incredible system. Alpine has both a stable release branch (biyearly) and a rolling release branch. I run rolling release with testing repo enabled (I need it for 1 package), and it's extremely stable. I never had any package update issue on Alpine. Apk is an amazing package manager and blazingly fast, it can rollback packages and iirc repository versions and it's also designed to not leave unused dependencies installed by default. Alpine itself is extremely minimal in both the amount of mandatory core software it has and the kind of software it is. All of my Alpine packages (most software I ever run) occupy less than 4GB and I even have development environments (JDK), creative software (GIMP, Blender, Darktable, etc), QEMU, etc. OpenRC is amazing, and it's also great that Alpine uses doas instead of sudo. >Alpine and Arch/Artix are very comparable, why Alpine over Arch-based? Very minimal even with all your software installed, no GNU, OpenRC, Doas, low attack surface, biyearly repository in case that suits you better. >Why Arch-based over Alpine? The biggest concern of Alpine is the fact that it uses musl instead of glibc. If you install the package "gcompat", you can run many glibc-linked programs directly (I ran waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan, it works), but you cannot run more complex programs like a third party build of WINE (WINE-GE is linked against glibc, gcompat is not enough to make it work). The use of musl will also make your life harder for other specific usecases, for example Minecraft launchers that fetch glibc-linked JVMs will give you many headaches, just use Flatpak for those.

>>83250 > with testing repo enabled (I need it for 1 package), I personally did it like this cat /etc/apk/repositories #... @testing https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing #... #End Of File doas apk add ratpoison@testing This way you don't need to globally enable the testing repo. Instead you can pick only certain packages from testing. Also, note that this is not always reliable, unless you run Edge.

>>83246 Alpine wiki just scared me from trying edge with it's warnings and recommending against using it on day-to-day workstation or productive system. I've been using arch for about 3 years without breakage, only visual bugs on KDE as long as I just check the arch website for manual intervention. Just wondering if I'd have the same experience on Alpine

>>83273 > Alpine wiki just scared me from trying edge with it's warnings and recommending against using it on day-to-day workstation or productive system. The developers want to maximize stability, hence why they warn against using edge. I have used Alpine with edge packages enabled and never had many issues. That said, there's nothing wrong with using the standard (and community) repositories and not using edge. > I've been using arch for about 3 years without breakage, only visual bugs on KDE as long as I just check the arch website for manual intervention. Just wondering if I'd have the same experience on Alpine I used SwayWM with Alpine for some time. The only bugs I had were with Waybar crashing, which was a config issue rather than an Alpine issue. Other than that everything worked fine. I wager KDE would be fine on Alpine as well if you used the standard releases.

>>83273 I've been running edge for several years and had problems like four times. Just some programs not working, nothing crucial. And most of it would be fixed with an update within a week. But I've recently switched to stable (took around 15 min) after one problem to quickly get rid of the issue and decided not to get back.

I daily drive Alpine on most of my computers and all my servers. The best thing I can tell you to do is to completely ignore the wiki and documentation because they both suck. The docs are incomplete and the wiki is super out of date in parts. The Arch/Gentoo/etc. wikis are your friends. You might also run into some issues with the coreutils and other things being provided by Busybox but I find that it has never been much of an issue for me. >but it's hell of a mess to setup for desktop usage They've been working on the setup-* scripts for some time I think, I wonder how setup-desktop or setup-xorg-base is now? >Can you give me some advices or link some guide to let it be 100% working, especially with glibc-based programs? Use debootstrap to get a Debian chroot. https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap Alternatively use flatpaks like mentioned earlier, if you are able to. There's more convoluted solutions which might be easier but chroots are what I know. >>83252 Don't mix stable and edge! >>83273 Edge is more stable than you think. The worst problem I have had from edge was that grub got thrashed for some reason so I had to fire up a live CD and reinstall grub. You might encounter problems with shared libraries extremely occasionally but you just need to upgrade your packages. Edge also has the testing repos which should be reason enough to use it, and really the only reason I run edge to begin with.

>>81870 Ive been using alpine for over 2 years on my server and on/off for nearly three on desktop/laptop. No issues whatsoever. IMO its the best distro available.

I was thinking of making an ultra lightweight just werks distro like mint or something based off alpine linux. most just werks distro are super heavy so it would be nice to have something lightweight you could probably patch through most of the pain points and maybe have flatpak installed by default for stuff like Steam

I'll be installing Alpine on at least one of my laptops tomorrow. If all goes well then it will be on both of them. I fuarked up my current main (Arch) install and need to re-do the entire thing, so I might as well distrohop. There are only a couple of things worrying me so I intend to make sure Alpine works as I want it on my older laptop before installing it on my main machine, namely Steam, AppImages and other packages not in the repos like the Tor Browser. I'm not a fan of Flatpak because of how bloated it is, so I hope Distrobox or Chroots serve me well. I will attempt to report tomorrow.

>>83429 3 days have passed. I unfortunately only did one computer because for some reason I didn't trust setup-disk to preserve my /home, it probably does just fine and I just had a schizo moment, alas. Alpine... works, once you've done setup-desktop you only have to pay attention to the package manager's quirks and setup distrobox and gcompat, which you can practically copy and paste from the documentation. It's not Gentoo documentation but it is reliable. Big fan of how it runs in my little laptop so old the Kernel no longs maintains its CPU, I'll be happy to have an Alpine box I can SSH into

>>83411 >I was thinking of making an ultra lightweight just werks distro like mint or something based off alpine linux. In my opinion, making a new distro is not worth it! There is already Puppy Linux and TinyCoreLinux. And besides, a lot more people would use it, if you made a easy installer script for Alpine Linux or post-installation script. Make something similar to LARBS. You can use my notes and tips as base. The text file is released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). >https://dpaste.com/5L7TE2Q6G The notes have instructions on how to do Arch-like "manual" installation. You also need to go to Alpine Linux gitlab and study the installer scripts (alpine-conf). It's relatively simple script. >>83486 >I unfortunately only did one computer because for some reason I didn't trust setup-disk to preserve my /home, You can also use setup-disk -v -m sys /mnt/alpine and chroot into /mnt/alpine (before you can chroot, you need to mount /dev, /sys, /proc with --bind or --rbind). You need to read the Alpine Installer scripts from their gitlab to make sure you do everything that the official installer does. I installed Alpine Linux this way back in 2023. You can read my notes and tips from the paste link above. Here is the synopsis: # run through the setup-alpine script... # ...BUT! do not select any disks or set up persistent storage! setup-apine # install the base system mkdir /mnt/alpine mount -t ext4 /dev/sda2 /mnt/alpine mkdir /mnt/alpine/boot mkdir /mnt/alpine/boot/efi mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/alpine/boot/efi setup-disk -v -m sys /mnt/alpine # chrooting mount --types proc /proc /mnt/alpine/proc mount --rbind /sys /mnt/alpine/sys mount --rbind /dev /mnt/alpine/dev mount --bind /run /mnt/alpine/run rc-update add seedrng boot || rc-update add urandom boot rc-update add networking boot #or install Connman/NetworkManager/whatever rc-update add acpid default passwd root # TODO: install whatever you need # Don't forget to install bootloader! apk add ratpoison doas doas-sudo-shim Be sure to read all scripts in this repo before you attempt doing this! >https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/alpine-conf

>>83411 Xubuntu is pretty darn light and still just werks [except on laptops thanks to that stupid lockscreen bug forcing the use of xscreensaver] It has ubuntu repos so 90% of hw works out of the box provided you're connected to ethernet during setup yet works well on the lowest end of systems that humans actually use, even on 1GB ram though expect a lot of swapfile use when surfing the net. Xubuntu + Cairo Dock on idle uses around 400mb ram. It doesnt waste many clock cycles either, with htop using more cpu than the entire DE at idle. It runs smooth on my 2GB ram atom netbook, which is around as powerful as a 2003 laptop or 2000 desktop thanks to its architecturally crippled CPU and mediocre GPU

Personally its pretty stable, documentation is good and I like it as a server OS. It can be ok as a desktop os if you do nothing else but read text from websites like this in elinks. Anything fancier than that and you get the issues that show you why musl hasn't taken over yet.

>>84056 That's a complete lie lol? Musl vs glibc performance is barely noticable unless you are writing a timing nerd. And the reason musl hasn't taken over yet is because glibc is already used everywhere.