I’d probably use Alpine to some capacity if NixOS wasn’t a thing.
I’m trying to get into Nix but I’m too stupid for it or something
It has a steep learning curve in the beginning but so does every mildly complex thing.
If there’s anything you’re stuck with, make sure you seek help in the appropriate channels such as !nixos[email protected].
I tried seeking help in an RTC channel as well, that’s also a good tip! I’ll give it another whirl!
Alpine was never meant as a desktop distribution.
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I tried Alpine for a desktop installation. The package manager has surprisingly decent package set. And the performance is the best I found, for some reason applications starts faster. But I had to stop the experience because websites thats includes widevine didn’t work. Its sad to say, but many softwares relies on non-standard glibc shit. With glibc instead of musl Alpine can be simply the best distro. If musl is not faster that glibc I don’t think glibc will make Alpine slower.
Alpine’s main thing is musl. musl is a lot better than glib, but you have to compile for it, which means no proprietary software.
Why is musl better than glibc? Looking at the licence, it’s just your classic corporate cuckolding that always leads to a net decrease in upstream contributions
yeah, fair enough, that’s a good point. Also now that I think about it, the dns resolution in musl is pretty bad, too. But I do appreciate that musl is designed to be lighter weight than glib, and that it supports static linking.
Because its a “niche” distro (like OpenBSD) that does not have a “real” purpose. As in, its niche is not “mandatory” by any means.
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What is the “real” purpose of Debian or Arch?
I should have been more clear – Debian/Arch “just works” and (both low/mid/high users) do not need of anything beyond that. And both Alpine/OpenBSD do not provide an extra “need” to anything of what both Debian/Arch already does. Unless if Alpine and/or OpenBSD provides a feature that makes Arch/Debian obsolete in any way… then yep, both will become more relevant.
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both don’t “just work” for many users.
…Windows users (migrating from Windows to Linux or just “posers”) do not count. :^)
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Alpine linux has plenty of cases
pretty good for servers
a fast package manager
…which are easily surpassed by (pretty much any distro). And idk why you highlighted those like its a some sort of “deal breaker” for whoever wants a stable/reliable distro – even a potato (486 and down) can run apt (which is terribly slow compared to any other package manager) incredibly fast nowadays. If those are (still) issues that are considered to be critical by you… then eh, I’m afraid to say that it’s a (You) problem. :^)
bro
(insert thuglife 12 year old here)
I like Alpine Linux very much and use it when I am going to containerize an application in docker. It’s incredibly lightweight and has a very good security history.
We like Alpine because it doesn’t run afoul of our outbound software license to distribute container images with it.
Of course most folks aren’t distributing full container images with their licensed software, so this niche probably doesn’t apply to most people.
That makes sense!
I recently pushed my company to move everything off of Alpine and onto Debian Slim
We had too many issues with musl that are incomprehensibly obscure and impossible to troubleshoot. Now the environment we deploy on is functionally the same to the environment our devs develop on
Now the environment we deploy on is functionally the same to the environment our devs develop on
Isn’t this one of the primary benefits of Docker?
Development, CI, and deployment environments can and should be the same.
Well it’s what alpine linux is. 😂I use it in WSL, to run podman
