 Visitor Reviews |
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Reader supplied reviews for Alpine Linux
Average rating
8.9 from 52 review(s)
Version: 3.23.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-01-15
Votes: 12
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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.
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Version: 3.23.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-12-07
Votes: 16
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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.
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Version: 3.22.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2025-11-25
Votes: 3
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I have installed Alpine on both a raspberry pi 4 as a server and on my thinkpad laptop with KDE.
Installing as a server was great, except I didn't realize that choosing sys (install on disk) can fail, so after doing lots of work with installing software and settings after a reboot they were all gone due to not having sys for some reason and not having done lbu commit (because I thought I had sys). Anyway, it somehow fixed itself after I did a lbu commit once so after the first lbu commit I never needed to do it again.
Running the server was also great, and I really like the environment and the apk package manager. However, I am trying to install LDAP and it would get stuck on SSL/TLS issues which made me unable to continue (it was working fine without SSL/TLS). So I decided to try kanidm (inside a docker container) instead of LDAP and that had the same issues with SSL/TLS. So I suspect that the SSL/TLS issues are related somehow to musl. SSL/TLS was working fine with nginx however. Unfortunately, this means I can't stick with Alpine on my server because I need to use SSL/TLS.
Installing on my laptop was a bit of a nightmare. Well, it installs fine, and on the laptop sys did stick on the first try. However, running setup-desktop it doesn't have any option for KDE, only lxqt. So installing KDE means figuring out every single package that should be part of the installation (which are sometimes named differently on Alpine than on other distributions, so you can't just copy a list from somewhere else). It took some effort, but once I managed to install everything, Alpine has been a joy to use on the laptop. Unfortunately, not being able to run Alpine on my servers means I won't stick with Alpine on the laptop because what's the point of that really. I don't want to remember that "oh I'm on this computer so I need to use this package manager"; I want the same basic system on all my instances.
Best of luck to the Alpine team - you have a very good thing going, but missing some crucial components for me.
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Version: 3.19.8
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-09-12
Votes: 29
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Alpine Linux
An extremely lightweight Linux distribution that still packs a lot of modern capabilities into it, including smooth package installation, removal and updates. I use it for small (1GB RAM) cloud servers because of its low resource requirements and smaller attack profile on installation. It would also be a good choice for old hardware or low-powered physical machines like a Raspberry Pi or a Pine Star64: it supports ARM (both 32-bit and aarch64) and RISC-V, and still supports older architectures like PowerPC and 32-bit x86 in addition to the more common x86_64.
Desktop environments work smoothly, though it does take a little effort to set one up.
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Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-09-10
Votes: 7
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Alpine Linux is a wonderful distribution if it is to be a slim operating system.
No unnecessary ballast is installed - only what is really needed.
Everything else can be added individually.
There is a lot of information in the manual or through the community.
Of course, this is not suitable for Linux beginners, as it does not run out-of-the-box.
However, if you want a fast and reliable and secure system, it is definitely worth it.
I can only recommend just trying this out.
Thanks to "setup-desktop" a graphical interface is quickly installed.
Then audio and network and the Daily-Driver is (almost) ready ^
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Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-08-15
Votes: 32
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Alpine Linux is by far the best distribution for a light weight desktop. My configuration involves running sway as window manager with seatd as seat manager. Foot for the terminal, Mako for the notification server, pipewire for audio, iwd for wifi networking, wlsunset for Day/night gamma adjustments, firefox as browser, i3blocks for swaybar, fish for interactive shell, refind as boot manager and tofi as menu launcher.
Some of the major advantages of using Alpine compared to other distributions are
* no extra packages/features are installed
* no extra customizations compared to the upstream
* stable, smooth and reliable updates
* super fast boot times and package manager
Ability to understand basic linux concepts and type commands in terminal is mandatory to use Alpine Linux. If you have zero experience in linux/unix, you may find it a bit of challenge to use Alpine linux. Hardware which require proprietary binary only drivers are not supported as the OS uses Musl C library compared to glibc, used by other linux distributions.
Eventhough most commonly used software are available from official package repositories, software from flathub can also be installed to supplement them. Some websites do provide appimages that work with Alpine Linux.
This review has been written after using Alpine Linux for more than an year now. If you have working knowledge in linux and are looking for a light weight OS with supported hardware, look no further.
Before moving to Alpine Linux i have used Linux Mint and Arch Linux. When you start using Alpine Linux, you will not want change your distribution.
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Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-08-01
Votes: 23
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Alpine Linux is a wonderful distribution. Finally my constant switching has come to an end. It's a super fast system and can be customized for any use. Of course, nothing is out-of-the-box here, but it's fun and educational to set up your own system. This also prevents unnecessary ballast.
I can give Alpine Linux a clear recommendation and hope that everyone will at least give it a try.
Alpine can also be used wonderfully as a desktop system and is my daily driver.
There are plenty of instructions on the Internet. This makes it possible even for a “beginner” to set up HIS Linux.
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Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-07-31
Votes: 2
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Alpine is a lean, simple, and tidy distribution. It can be configured very flexibly. It is a distribution for (almost) every purpose—from desktop to server.
I use it exclusively on my laptop. After a little setup, it can compete with any other desktop Linux and is significantly faster than anything else I have tried.
This is mainly thanks to BusyBox and musl. In addition, this also increases the security of the entire system.
It is definitely worth a try.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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Version: 3.22.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-05-31
Votes: 23
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An amazing and easy Linux distribution. I moved to Alpine linux land from Debian, which I have been using for more than five years and have not changed distributions.
But I was tired of the problems that systemd caused (long computer shutdown time and systemd components littering the system). I had been looking towards Alpine linux for a long time and decided to give it a try. What an amazing experience it was. The system installed very quickly. Five minutes and I found myself in a wonderful CLI environment.
Then I started building my system. I installed lxqt and pulseaudio. Together with flatpak packages and the wonderful Alpine linux documentation, nothing more is needed. Everything works without any problems....I recommend it to anyone looking for a stable, secure and lightweight system.
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Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-05-08
Votes: 31
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I have now used Alpine on bare metal (before was only using as vms and on my pi) and it gets 10 out of 10. Such an awesome base to start with to build exactly the Unix system you want without all the Redhat malware (systemd, pulseaudio, gnaome, udev, etc). I complained about no RBAC out of the box but that is actually a good thing so you can use the RBAC you want. Really the only nag I have is having to go back and install *-doc every time I find a needed man page but I can even see the advantage of that for embedded and VMs. Its allowed me to build a hybrid OpenBSD like meets LMDE (but with KDE) system with the best of both worlds. It runs brilliantly as a host for KVM guests as well. Chef's kiss.
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Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-04-18
Votes: 36
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Pros:
- Extremely lightweight and fast: Alpine is not only perfect for virtualization and embedded systems, but also for making the most out of old/low-end personal computers.
- Easy to use and setup: the official wiki is amazing and contains step by step tutorials for almost anything you might need. I am kind of a newbie to Linux and yet I never had any issues setting up Alpine.
- Stable as a rock: In over a month of extensive usage, including programming and gaming, I never encountered a single bug. Since packages are heavily tested before getting accepted in the main or community repositories, they're also less prone to bugs than in other distros I've tried.
Minimalistic: Alpine ships with only the bare necessities. You'll have to install everything from a desktop environment to a network manager or a sound server yourself, but the wiki makes all of these trivial. This design philosophy allows you to have absolutely zero bloatware, your computer won't have anything in it that you haven't explicitly asked for.
Cons:
- since Alpine uses musl as its c library implementation, a lot of software doesn't run on it (most notably nvidia drivers). Flatpak can mitigate this issue but you still will find some software that just can't work on Alpine.
- although as I said it's really easy to use, seeing it up requires some basic knowledge of IT terminology in order to answer the many questions the setup script will ask you. Users who are afraid of using the terminal will also have a hard time with Alpine because it doesn't come with a pre installed desktop environment
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Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-04-11
Votes: 28
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I'm a Linux user since 1999. Stared with Slackware, when it was downloaded to 36 Floppy disks.
I'd worked on Salckware, Redhat, Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and recently Mint
I had started with Alpine since 3.18.
I can say that
1- Fast, very fast. I installed version 3.21 with full desktop configuration+some applications like firefox, libreoffice via automated scripts and it it took ROUND 5MINUTES!!!. Latest Mint Linux took 35 Min on the same environment.
I had successfully installed it on 256MB Ram P4 and P5. I was capable to port some old drivers for printer and scanners to Alpine. They worked fine
So, I decide to build my own Distro based on Alpine favoring it for other bloat distros.
I will focus to provide a distro for normal users working needs.
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Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 7
Date: 2025-03-24
Votes: 3
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Alpine, by itself alone, is truly the best distribution by far I' ve tried so far, but it has some points to be improved. I'm reporting as a desktop user, more specifically running Plasma (which works very nice).
Pros:
- The fastest distribution I've ever tested (in between Arch, BigLinux, Xiva Studio, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE);
- It is quite easy to "build" from instalation, because online reference is very good and has those very helpul "setup-something" scripts;
- You get exactly what you set up on it (no bloats in any way);
- OpenRC init (I have nothing against systemd, but, this is the best distro I've tested that not rely on systemd for its init process);
- Flatpak (which is needed here, see below);
- Stable, very stable if you don't enable the edge repository;
- Fast, almost touch sensitive distro to use, with very efficient base (with musl and BusyBox, and apk, the best package manager I've seen on any O.S.).
Cons (or, to be improved):
- It has few applications in its repositories, enough for average use, but I miss some applications I can use in Arch or Mint, for example, leading me to user flatpak version of some apps;
- Lack of support, you basically have the online guide to solve issues, even the issues link on webpage has issues (it opens to me a blank page with an empty table);
- No proper Nvidia support (because of Nvidia itself not supporting musl C library) for proprietary driver;
- No language support (even Plasma doesn't allow any aditional locale/language besides C.UTF-8).
I really wish the devs would consider take this distro as a desktop O.S. with more priority, because even with these problems it's still very clean and pleasant to use.
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Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-02-17
Votes: 32
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Alpine Linux is hands down the best distribution I've ever used. After two years of relentless distro-hopping and trying nearly every distro out there, I finally discovered Alpine and fell in love. Now, all of my machines run it, and I couldn't be happier.
Alpine excels in versatility—it's perfect for gaming, schoolwork, web browsing, and more. With over 25,000 packages available in its repositories, it offers a lightweight yet an amazing and powerful experience.
The only drawback I've encountered is its hardware compatibility; it doesn't support NVIDIA systems, which prompted me to build a new PC to fully enjoy its benefits. In terms of performance, I've found Alpine to be on par with, if not better than, CachyOS and Gentoo based on my experience.
I highly recommend giving Alpine Linux a try
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Version: 3.21.0
Rating: 6
Date: 2024-12-31
Votes: 7
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At first, I fell in love with Alpine Linux. It used less RAM, was fast (it booted in a few seconds), and my experience with apk was pleasant. After trying it on physical hardware for a month or so though after getting bored of using Arch, I encountered many issues and had to make a bunch of compromises (which will be listed below).
Some general information before we get into this:
I have a pretty beefy computer, with a 9900k, 1050 Ti, and 32GB of RAM, and I also was using the alpha channel for packages.
At the time (around two months ago), I was obsessed with making my computer use the lowest amount of memory possible.
What was great:
* apk was fast, and easy to use (best package manager I have come across)
* Booted in a few seconds
* Consistently used less than 1GB of memory with a bunch of programs open, without any (just my desktop) 250MB (got as low as 154MB with 9wm).
* Used next to no storage
What wasn't all that great:
* Nouveau didn't work at all (X11 would refuse to start)
* Setting up even integrated graphics was a hassle and took nearly an entire week for me to figure out
* I was starting on C#, but sadly I could not install any programs (or vim language servers) which provided syntax highlighting and feedback (such as VSCodium) so I had to go without it
* Minecraft (which I only really use for graphical testing these days), would not launch beyond version 1.18.2
* Occasionally, my monitor would start flashing as if the refresh rate was configured incorrectly when set to 60hz
* As an extension to that, at 165hz the screen was weirdly dimmed, and at 144hz everything was fine
* A pretty major one right off the bat: the installer wouldn't boot, so I had to install Alpine completely manually from Arch. It was for sure a cumbersome experience!
* On top of all of that though, Alpine has a nearly nonexistent support community. Due to that, I had to figure out how to either solve my problems, or make less functional compromises.
After this experience, I went back to Arch. I definitely miss apk and everything I liked about Alpine, but the issues I had were simply too major for me to stay.
I personally am giving Alpine a 6/10 as I very much enjoyed everything but the issues I had with it.
If this was on a VM though, I would have definitely given it a 10/10!
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Version: 3.20.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-10-20
Votes: 123
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Alpine works pretty much out of the box in an OpenBSD vmm virtual machine is not true for most Linux distros. It boots quicker than just about any Linux I have ever seen and being very minimal it runs Firefox acceptably fast over ssh on a OpenBSD host. It boots faster and runs Firefox much faster than an OpenBSD guest on VMM. Chrome is close to same speed on both though and slower for some reason on Alpine. Would give 10 out of 10 but it doesn't come with a RBAC system out of the tin. Also haven't run it on bare metal. Perfect for resource liteish vm environments though.
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Version: 3.20.1
Rating: 1
Date: 2024-07-10
Votes: 1
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Alpine Linux has SSE and SSE2 as a CPU requirement . I don't know wether it is because of this but Alpine 3.20.0 and up will also not start anymore on my Pentium I,II and III hardware. This is a enormous great pity in many aspects!
Who's next?
Most distro's that claim they're suitable for i386, i486 , i586 or i686 processors also implement SSE(2). This makes them, in fact, only suiteable for the higher end i686 processors (approx.) starting with pentium IV. Distro's that still run on Pentium I,II and III hardware are becoming very rare now. Crazy! I really did put quite some time not to find the abounded "Illegal Instruction" in i386, i486 , i586 distro's.
There is some luck because old non-active versions of Alpine linux are still there incl. the repos. And TinyCore Linux and NetBSD are active distro's that still continue respecting these old pc's. For me they seem the safest choice for now.
To be honest I have to bring my vote for Alpine Linux back from 10 to 1 for Alpine seemed to have dropped support for old computers and old computers are my passion.
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Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 5
Date: 2024-05-31
Votes: 1
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I've been using Alpine for 5-6 years. Headless machine for Nextcloud.
Unfortunately, each new version brought its own proper mess. No indications provided : you're on your own.
Succeeded to figure it out till 3.19->3.20 where I'm stuck (transitional package nextcloud28 can't be installed).
No support whatsoever, so I'm giving up.
Also, be aware that systemctl isn't used. No EFI install and you'll have to stick with grub (obviously not a problem in a single boot headless machine - except for grub's own mess).
A remarkable distro from dev/sysadmin to dev/sysadmin.
If you're not among the happy few, look for something more mainstream..
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Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-05-13
Votes: 93
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Decided to give Alpine a spin whilst Void transitioned to Plasma 6 but I might stay with Alpine. During the installation (which was a very simple process) confused me because I thought the downloads were not working, but low and behold, they were just very fast. A download from DNF from Fedora for example would take up 15 to 20 seconds to download a 1.5GB package whilst APK from Alpine would take about 5 seconds (maybe less) for the same size, just incredible.
Alpine is very customizable in terms of packages so you can only download the stuff you need. Also Alpine uses Musl for further minimalist installs as appose to the common Glibc so there may be instances where flatpaks will be your best friend. Overall I'm really enjoying Alpine, currently using KDE with flatpaks for some gaming,general web browsing and some emulation and it has been a blast. I would not recommend to new users due to needing some knowledge on the packages you need for your build and setting up services such as dbus.
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Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-04-21
Votes: 58
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This is really the most clear and bloat-free Linux distro you can ever get. That's why it's called Alpine Linux, because it's so clear like the air in the Alps. The install is very straightforward, and you can easily install all of the major DEs like KDE or Xfce. It has neofetch in the repo, so how can it be a bad distro? Memory consumption is unreal, 100 MB on a fresh install without a DE. I just recently discovered this distro and I thought Arch was a minimal distro, but this is way more lean than Arch Linux.
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Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-04-07
Votes: 19
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As a long time user of Alpine, since 3.10, I must say it is the only distro that fuels my enthusiasm on the Linux world. The KISS approach (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the winning formula for me, in a software world that has become full of unnecessary complexity and TOTAL nonsense.
Pros:
- slim, tini-tiny surface of attack, easy to make it EXTREMELY secure if you know what to do
- apk is a work of art
- used it in ultra-heavy-workload virtualization/backup servers, was simply the fastest/mosty efficent distro ever
- peace of mind when you run "netstat -anp" and see that the ports that are OPEN are THE ports YOU decided were open, not some obscure binary program outside of your control (systemd?)
- full of modern features, recent kernels/libs, very well mantained overall
Cons:
- documentation is sparse, sometimes you have to figure out yourself the changes made by looking into code/init
- community is basically an IRC channel and gitlab, seeking help can be a bit difficult, but developers are generally nice
- an effort to make something like a "default desktop" would be nice, imho.
- need a bit of grinding (not really THAT much) so maybe not very easy for beginners.
The missing glibc is not really a problem, you can just make a chroot or a similar "container", or even add it straight to the system with a third-party apk repository that works beautifully (made by Sasha Gerrand and available on github).
It's the only distro I use, and probably will. I'll switch to something else only if it gets systemd. It's THE deal-breaker for me.
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Version: 3.19.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-01-10
Votes: 62
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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: 135
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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: 5
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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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Version: 3.18.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-07-30
Votes: 17
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-1 star for LXQT for not being anything remotely ready for primetime. Buggy, incomplete, problematic. That was day 1. Installing XFCE was a gigantic relief because that would assemble and was a nifty, complete implementation.
-1 for closing their email list ("new registration no longer accepted") to people that want to join their community. Mastadon/IM just seems like a poor alternative since many of us don't want to IM.
Other than that, great adventure. I had to raise my modest skill level to make this work. It's a skeleton CLI operating with no DE, a few degrees separated from Linux From Scratch, and you are in the complete control. I loved it. If forces you to really think about what you are installing. You enable your own services.
You can read all the comments on here, or all the internet reviews, and they are all torn on one thing. Half the people believe this is just a Server distro and the other half think it's a Complete Desktop experience. I wanted a secure Daily Driver and I got one. Was it meant for this? I don't know yet.
Kudos to their fantastic and easy documentation. Problems will come up in configuring as you go, and all of mine could be remedied quickly with their information.
This has no bells and whistles or flash outside of what xfce4 offers, and if you want bells and whistles, Alpine will be happy if you go back to Ubuntu. I respect this. Alpine is very much a mindset.
I eschewed their own awall for ufw, and had to install iptables, but that's part of the fun. I pick and choose. OpenRC is fast fast fast.
I have 5 of their repos enabled and it's a modest offering with firefox and chromium the only GUI browsers really. When there are about 6-7 vim/keyboard browsers curated that should tell you something.....:) All my favorite CLI tools are there. And it supports Flatpak so I really have to be conservative in my approach but I love the option.
I like Alpine and I'm sticking with it. I wrote this on day 4 of using Alpine daily.
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Version: 3.18.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-05-12
Votes: 114
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Very nice! It isn't as bloated as most other distributions, it's package manager is nice, and it's a good experience, with good security also.
It isn't without downsides though. It suffers the same issue as Void Linux (poor distro-specific documentation), and the package base is small. This forces you to sometimes manually compile things, which is often fine and also educational, but it sometimes causes headaches. There's also a heavy reliance on Flatpaks for many things.
Also, here's a tip: If you use flatpaks on here, and also use pulseaudio, use "pulseaudio --start && flatpak run [thing]" to run the aforementioned flatpaks.
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Version: 3.17.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-04-26
Votes: 65
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Alpine is an Ethical, Safe, Secure, Stable, Fast, Fun and well thought out system.
I'm using it as a base operating system on a couple laptops for various programming and research projects.
The main reason I pursued using Alpine is world class security.
Having musl, a custom busybox (less suid, static links), the small foot print (in this case, less is better),
the ability to dismiss any drivers and configure the system as I see fit, sold me.
Are you tired of titanic sized, insecure systemd bloatware, "convenience model" systems leaving you open to
all sorts of attacks, built by wanna-be hackers?
then;
Use Alpine, it's solved those issues and more for me.
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Version: 3.17.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-04-04
Votes: 45
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An Alpine JWM desktop can start with ~30mb memory usage.
Minimalism and extending the lifespan of a computer is my kind of hobby :o)
For me Alpine is the ideal distro for x86 32bit hardware with a desktop.
I managed smoothly streaming video's with Alpine and JWM as desktop
under 64 MB. X and JWM start up here with a total mem usage of ~30mb.
With wifi and the DRM driver blacklisted (and all DRM drivers removed in the
initramfs too to even be able to boot). Bare and stable. No bloat installed.
When Alpine v3.15+ turned towards DRM-only-drivers it became too big
and slow for 64mb. There was a too big regression in performance and
choices. So now I run v3.17.3 with the kernel from v3.14.10. Compiling the
kernel yourself is an option, but on this machine it means endless swapping
and days or even weeks of waiting ...... :o(
End of Alpine v3.14.10 is may 2023. I hope for 25 years of prolonged
sequrity updates for this version :o)
Void has no 32bit musl version.
Alpine 3.17.3 also runs on my "Multi Media Center for a Raspberry PI zero"
without the above kernel change. The X and a JWM desktop start with a
memory consumption of 41 mb (the mb's for wifi and barrier and the mrxvt
terminal to type "free" are hereby included).
GTK+2.0 is still present in the repos and DIY builds for GTK+2.0 give an
enormous powerboost. GTK+3.0 became far too heavy. No standard
webbrowser will run nicely on a rpi0 because of the also heavy javascript.
Netsurf GTK+2.0 is the (beautiful!) only one that still shows some
erformance here. But with the help of the Alpine repos streaming iptv
& ipradio is well possible with smooth running DIY grafical menu's. The
grafical chip of the RPI0/1 is a nice one and Alpine performs well here.
The APKBUILD of Alpine do not differ much from the PKGBUILD from Arch.
APKBUILD's might even be a little bit more streamlined :o)
My Fear: Is Alpine also going to bloat itself, just like the other distro's?
Indeed Windows 98 also ran on 64mb. So it seems clear that progression, in
general, means a big regression on the memory and performance side. With
far too much unnessecary material waste as a result.
All in all. Alpine is a wonderfull and very special distro!
Big thanks for Alpine that it could realize what (all?) others can't achieve in
today's memory consumption and ease.
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Version: 3.17.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-02-27
Votes: 16
|
Alpine is a very good, multi functional Linux system.
Installation process is extremely fast and easy. After installation, completing system setup and creating xfce4 desktop took me only one hour. Adding other system and application packages were very easy and fast as well.
In about less than two hours I had my system up and running with all the packages (nothing more, nothing less) I liked to have on my system. Alpine gave me a freedom that I did not have in many other Linux distros I tried before.
I had web browser, graphics and media applications, libreoffice-calc all active on my desktop and the amount of memory used was only 1.4GB. Alpine never wastes system resources. It is fast and effective.
If you are a person with little Linux experience, do not shy away from Alpine. Its documentation base is extremely useful to help you create your system easily, quickly with the way you like.
Alpine package manager apk, is the fastest package manager I have ever used. Each software package also has its documentation package separately listed (i.e. man pages).
I have been enjoying using and experimenting with Alpine on my system with no issues so far. Alpine is a quiet achiever. Go for it!..
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Version: 3.17.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-02-09
Votes: 8
|
I set out to check "Build a Router" off my bucket-list. I've setup Linux distros on my home machines for more than 20 years now. I prefer Fedora for my desktop for "reasons", but Fedora server really failed me here. Between systemd-resolved, network manager, and dnsmasq, taking my amateur, basic networking skills to the next level just was NOT happening. There is FAR too much going on there.
The Alpine Linux "sys" install onto a drive is a classic, minimal Linux installation WITHOUT systemd or network manager. It was/is the best approach I could find to learn the interoperability between iptables/nftables, dnsmasq, and hostapd. Nothing seemed to work until I discovered some iptables bits on a Ubuntu forum that finally enabled comms between my LAN, WLAN, and the internet. (I did a lot of reading - books even. But all the books are old too, and describe iptables and BIND in great detail.)
As of 3.17, I found the iptables package pretty much "broken" out-of-the-box, along with dnsmasq. The dnsmasq service sets up a bridge on 10.0.x.x behind your back AND a firewall with iptables rules. The iptables package wouldn't open up my traffic with some very, very basic FORWARD rules for my subnets. nftables saved the day, but the default nftables.conf also breaks a basic home router table. I'm sure none of that makes sense. OH, and the "net.ipv4.ip_forward" bit wasn't set by default. But nftables was easy to fix. The dnsmasq service file had to be pared down to a regular service that depends on "firewall". And the nftables package provides that. Basically all of the networking HOWTOs on the Alpine wiki are old and just don't work now.
Setting up Samba for a NAS was the easy part! That HOWTO is a winner.
It's a mixed bag, but I'll take it!
|
Version: 3.17.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-01-26
Votes: 8
|
This is a neat little distro.
The install is pretty easy actually. I you read the manual, it's not hard to set up a desktop environment even though that is not Alpines main niche.
The package manager seems to be good and have an understandable syntax.
It's fast, has a small footprint, is independent and free from systemd. What more could you ask for?
It's perfect for a user like me who have basic needs and mainly read email and browse the web.
I'll refrain from giving it a 10 because there is no perfect distro, but a 9 for sure.
|
Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-09-17
Votes: 28
|
Mainly 20 years with Linux, tried different distro. Used Arch for long time.
Alpine is really KISS. Package management is fast, easy and reliable.
Easy to secure distro.
I've used it at first on Raspberry Pi for making a nano server for self hosting my website and my email with postfix. Now alpine is also on my main PC. Great as server OS and great for desktop for those who like minimalism. For the main PC, i'm using the edge version as it is stable and rolling...
Alpine is fast, lightweight and very pleasant.
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Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-09-08
Votes: 19
|
Alpine is the BEST and most underrated Linux distro.
Very long-time (and still love) Slackware guy, do some admin, including some live CentOS web / blog servers, tried many distros over the years.
I stumbled into Alpine because I was looking to mess with and learn virtualization. I saw Alpine Xen recommended, and I was impressed by the small download size.
Fell in love at first login. Nothing bad to say. Many utilities link to BusyBox, but you can easily install the real one if you need the full functionality.
The only negatives, and these are mild, are:
1) "Midori" web browser just would not even run.
2) some other quirks with GUI, but I'm building CLI servers, so GUI is secondary. AND, I did not try other windowing systems, so there's more to be tried in the X / GUI department.
3) It's based on musl libraries, not glibc. I'm not expert enough to know the pros and cons, but it works. The main con: AFAIK, you can't run glibc-linked binaries- you have to get the musl version, or compile it yourself. All that said, I find every package I could want is available in Alpine repositories. (I do coding and compiling, so that wouldn't be a problem if needed).
4) From the start I've felt strongly that good package management is critical to any Linux distro. Alpine's apk works very well, but I would prefer more functionality, and maybe a GUI front-end.
Alpine is not advertised as "rolling release", but every time they've come out with a new version, apk has no problem upgrading everything correctly, no problems. So if you're looking for rolling release (very important to me), consider Alpine as being functionally rolling release.
|
Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-09-01
Votes: 22
|
One of the rare small systems for general aarch64. I installed it in UTM on Macbok Air M1 and use it with the XFCE4 desktop for daily using the web.
Alpinelinux is very small, stable and fast. I installed it in a few minutes as "system" on a hdd. The tutorials are easy to follow and work without problems.
I like it. It is independent and a very good alternative to the heavy weight *buntus. I don't need a full featured system, prepared for all needs. I searched for a small internet machine and Alpine fits this very good.
i got the XFCE4 desktop without unneeded stuff, clean and fast. I only need a browser and a terminal.
For system updates just use:
# apk update
# apk ugrade
Done.
It is really worth trying.
|
Version: 3.16.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-06-11
Votes: 35
|
/*
The most sane distro available as of 2022.
Minimal, efficient, secure, simple, stable -- these are all words that come to mind when describing Alpine Linux.
Compared to Void Linux, Alpine is smaller, more secure, stable, and actively maintained, though both distros are excellent choices.
I look forward to a future when Alpine has its own s6-based init system (in development), though in the mean time I am happy with OpenRC.
If you want a truly minimal linux distro that does everything you want but nothing more, look no further.
*/
|
Version: 3.16.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-05-25
Votes: 25
|
Gave Alpine a try today and I am in LOVE! Man, this thing is super easy to get on with and is very versatile -- from simple server running just syncthing to full desktop workstation with xfce (my pref), just be sure to enable the repos.
I've been a long time Void user and will continue to use it as my daily driver. Alpine will be for servers and very possibly my HTPC since the repo has everything i need.
musl is snappy, that's a huge compliment coming from an avid Void user.
Fantastic distro. Finally gave it a try, very impressed.
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-23
Votes: 66
|
Alpine Linux is pretty small and secure, it's a great and minimalistic Operating System offering an absolute perfect base for Docker images. Currently the Alpine-Linux Docker base image has about 6 megabytes on the Docker Registry.
It is based on musl as it's standard C library and Busybox which is a software suite which provides several standard tools in one executable file, especially created for low footprint operating systems.
I build Docker Images by myself so I can tell about the difference having an about thirty megabyte image where other comparable images occupy a few hundred megabytes on your harddisk by having absolutely no benefits compared to Alpine-Based images. It's exactly the opposite, as it's pretty secure by the position-independent execution technique which randomizes the position of running applications in memory and therefore minimizes attack vectors and preventing buffer overflows with it's stack smasching protection additionally.
It has apk (not to be confused with Android APKs) as it's package manager which is lean and fast and doesn't lack of any features, at least for myself. Some packages aren't available in the distribution though but I never missed anything special.
Even I just use it on console, you can install a x-windows system as Alpine supports several window managers.
The distribution and it's packages are actively maintained.
My conclusion: a small memory footprint, it's security features and no unnecessary packages installed makes it my absolute favorite Linux distribution.
This is a fire-and-forget, I just love it!
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-14
Votes: 43
|
truly a K.I.S.S. distro which gets the job done. It can be a solid workstation as well if you love flatpaks
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-08
Votes: 39
|
Undoubtedly my go-to linux distro for anything server based, within-reason. Since it is musl-based, there are some limitations on what binaries will run. (or compile if you roll your own packages on this platform.) It works exceedingly well as a server and the resource consumption is ridiculously smaller compared to just about everything else out there.
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-01-27
Votes: 25
|
Tried it out for the first time: it was the easiest console installation processed I've ever used. Big plus was it supported encryption and even Btrfs with one environment variable.
The installation finishes really quickly and is super lightweight in terms of boot time, RAM usage, and packages. No systemd cruft. I started using this for a personal server.
Its package manager has also been really solid and easy to use.
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-01-01
Votes: 32
|
Underrated. Good rate for this distro is 9.5
It is compact, fast and stable.
|
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-30
Votes: 54
|
Alpine has been a fast, stable and secure distro for me. It’s a small distro and lightweight too. There are multiple uses for this distro like for a server, for Raspberry Pi, etc. The documentation is great as well. I recommend Alpine.
|
Version: 3.14.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-09-29
Votes: 46
|
Alpine Linux is the only Linux distribution that fits in my head. It's extremely minimal yet fast and secure, and doesn't use bloat libraries like glibc or systemd. An unfortunate result of this is that many proprietary applications simply will not work on Alpine.
apk is by far the fastest package manager, faster than even pacman with parallel downloads.
|
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-05-28
Votes: 75
|
Alpine worked out of the box on an old Kohjinsha SA1F00 UMPC running an AMD Geode CPU.
Pros - This little UMPC only has a 30GB disk and Alpine is taking next to nothing. Super fast, lightweight, setup was quick and easy.
Cons - couldn't detect the Winbond onboard wifi controller, had to purchase a $9 Panda wireless USB dongle from Amazon (which DID work right out of the gate). Also, wireless was not part of the initial install, had to do that separately, but that might be because it didn't detect the onboard card.
Running now for a week with no issues, decided against running in graphical mode due to small disk and RAM - was able to get BOINC running along with cmatrix as a terminal screensaver, so it's happily sitting on a corner of the desk churning away.
Originally was in the same camp as another reviewer about a dearth of packages, then discovered the "edge" repository, and OMG there's a boatload of them available.
|
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 5
Date: 2021-05-08
Votes: 0
|
this distro works- chromium works ,apache ok but sound cards - no ...
|
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-04-18
Votes: 2
|
Bugs reported 5 years ago are still there...
Installation is failing on mirrors, and packages that are missing (like syslinux, etc..)
These and other bugs have been reported in their forums 5 years ago. Admins are asking for tips and solutions from the applicants and the public..
it's a ridiculous system that won't start, is buggy and totally complicated.
|
Version: 3.13.3
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-03-29
Votes: 44
|
This distro is probably best for servers or Docker containers because it is very light. It's easy to install and when it's installed you get to build out your system, so there arent any useless programs that you're never going to use. You get to choose what you want on your system.
Also the Alpine package manager is pretty fast but there aren't as many packages.
If you want a web server or even a simple desktop environment alpine linux is going to be more than enough.
|
Version: 3.13.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-01-29
Votes: 43
|
The base system is amazing and rock stable. The package manager is the best I've tried. It just lacks a bit of application support to iron out some glitches and make more packages available.
|
Version: 3.13.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-01-26
Votes: 40
|
Great community.
Great set of packages
Awesome documentation.
Fast
Runs on a wide variety of h/w
I find this distribution very flexible for creating hosts for a wide variety
of uses/functions.
|
Version: 3.13.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-14
Votes: 46
|
Not only for routers, been using Alpine as my desktop system and it WORKS, it's simple, secure and the core packages are minimal.
What makes Alpine different from other distributions:
Userland: Busybox
Shell: Busybox's ash
Libc: musl libc
SSL: Libressl
init: OpenRC
|
Version: 3.12.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-11
Votes: 31
|
Great for all uses. I use it for desktop, server, and raspberry pi.
|
Version: 3.12.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-09
Votes: 36
|
Alpine Linux is different. It can be extreme small and fit in several roles (SOC, embedded, router, server and workstation, etc). It has a very clean and easy to use package system. It does not use Systemd - which is a big plus for very small systems. The documentation is good enough and up to date. Not much to complain. Give it a try!
|
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Latest Reviews
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.23.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-01-15
Votes: 12
|
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.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.23.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-12-07
Votes: 16
|
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.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2025-11-25
Votes: 3
|
I have installed Alpine on both a raspberry pi 4 as a server and on my thinkpad laptop with KDE.
Installing as a server was great, except I didn't realize that choosing sys (install on disk) can fail, so after doing lots of work with installing software and settings after a reboot they were all gone due to not having sys for some reason and not having done lbu commit (because I thought I had sys). Anyway, it somehow fixed itself after I did a lbu commit once so after the first lbu commit I never needed to do it again.
Running the server was also great, and I really like the environment and the apk package manager. However, I am trying to install LDAP and it would get stuck on SSL/TLS issues which made me unable to continue (it was working fine without SSL/TLS). So I decided to try kanidm (inside a docker container) instead of LDAP and that had the same issues with SSL/TLS. So I suspect that the SSL/TLS issues are related somehow to musl. SSL/TLS was working fine with nginx however. Unfortunately, this means I can't stick with Alpine on my server because I need to use SSL/TLS.
Installing on my laptop was a bit of a nightmare. Well, it installs fine, and on the laptop sys did stick on the first try. However, running setup-desktop it doesn't have any option for KDE, only lxqt. So installing KDE means figuring out every single package that should be part of the installation (which are sometimes named differently on Alpine than on other distributions, so you can't just copy a list from somewhere else). It took some effort, but once I managed to install everything, Alpine has been a joy to use on the laptop. Unfortunately, not being able to run Alpine on my servers means I won't stick with Alpine on the laptop because what's the point of that really. I don't want to remember that "oh I'm on this computer so I need to use this package manager"; I want the same basic system on all my instances.
Best of luck to the Alpine team - you have a very good thing going, but missing some crucial components for me.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.8
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-09-12
Votes: 29
|
Alpine Linux
An extremely lightweight Linux distribution that still packs a lot of modern capabilities into it, including smooth package installation, removal and updates. I use it for small (1GB RAM) cloud servers because of its low resource requirements and smaller attack profile on installation. It would also be a good choice for old hardware or low-powered physical machines like a Raspberry Pi or a Pine Star64: it supports ARM (both 32-bit and aarch64) and RISC-V, and still supports older architectures like PowerPC and 32-bit x86 in addition to the more common x86_64.
Desktop environments work smoothly, though it does take a little effort to set one up.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-09-10
Votes: 7
|
Alpine Linux is a wonderful distribution if it is to be a slim operating system.
No unnecessary ballast is installed - only what is really needed.
Everything else can be added individually.
There is a lot of information in the manual or through the community.
Of course, this is not suitable for Linux beginners, as it does not run out-of-the-box.
However, if you want a fast and reliable and secure system, it is definitely worth it.
I can only recommend just trying this out.
Thanks to "setup-desktop" a graphical interface is quickly installed.
Then audio and network and the Daily-Driver is (almost) ready ^
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-08-15
Votes: 32
|
Alpine Linux is by far the best distribution for a light weight desktop. My configuration involves running sway as window manager with seatd as seat manager. Foot for the terminal, Mako for the notification server, pipewire for audio, iwd for wifi networking, wlsunset for Day/night gamma adjustments, firefox as browser, i3blocks for swaybar, fish for interactive shell, refind as boot manager and tofi as menu launcher.
Some of the major advantages of using Alpine compared to other distributions are
* no extra packages/features are installed
* no extra customizations compared to the upstream
* stable, smooth and reliable updates
* super fast boot times and package manager
Ability to understand basic linux concepts and type commands in terminal is mandatory to use Alpine Linux. If you have zero experience in linux/unix, you may find it a bit of challenge to use Alpine linux. Hardware which require proprietary binary only drivers are not supported as the OS uses Musl C library compared to glibc, used by other linux distributions.
Eventhough most commonly used software are available from official package repositories, software from flathub can also be installed to supplement them. Some websites do provide appimages that work with Alpine Linux.
This review has been written after using Alpine Linux for more than an year now. If you have working knowledge in linux and are looking for a light weight OS with supported hardware, look no further.
Before moving to Alpine Linux i have used Linux Mint and Arch Linux. When you start using Alpine Linux, you will not want change your distribution.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-08-01
Votes: 23
|
Alpine Linux is a wonderful distribution. Finally my constant switching has come to an end. It's a super fast system and can be customized for any use. Of course, nothing is out-of-the-box here, but it's fun and educational to set up your own system. This also prevents unnecessary ballast.
I can give Alpine Linux a clear recommendation and hope that everyone will at least give it a try.
Alpine can also be used wonderfully as a desktop system and is my daily driver.
There are plenty of instructions on the Internet. This makes it possible even for a “beginner” to set up HIS Linux.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-07-31
Votes: 2
|
Alpine is a lean, simple, and tidy distribution. It can be configured very flexibly. It is a distribution for (almost) every purpose—from desktop to server.
I use it exclusively on my laptop. After a little setup, it can compete with any other desktop Linux and is significantly faster than anything else I have tried.
This is mainly thanks to BusyBox and musl. In addition, this also increases the security of the entire system.
It is definitely worth a try.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.22.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-05-31
Votes: 23
|
An amazing and easy Linux distribution. I moved to Alpine linux land from Debian, which I have been using for more than five years and have not changed distributions.
But I was tired of the problems that systemd caused (long computer shutdown time and systemd components littering the system). I had been looking towards Alpine linux for a long time and decided to give it a try. What an amazing experience it was. The system installed very quickly. Five minutes and I found myself in a wonderful CLI environment.
Then I started building my system. I installed lxqt and pulseaudio. Together with flatpak packages and the wonderful Alpine linux documentation, nothing more is needed. Everything works without any problems....I recommend it to anyone looking for a stable, secure and lightweight system.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-05-08
Votes: 31
|
I have now used Alpine on bare metal (before was only using as vms and on my pi) and it gets 10 out of 10. Such an awesome base to start with to build exactly the Unix system you want without all the Redhat malware (systemd, pulseaudio, gnaome, udev, etc). I complained about no RBAC out of the box but that is actually a good thing so you can use the RBAC you want. Really the only nag I have is having to go back and install *-doc every time I find a needed man page but I can even see the advantage of that for embedded and VMs. Its allowed me to build a hybrid OpenBSD like meets LMDE (but with KDE) system with the best of both worlds. It runs brilliantly as a host for KVM guests as well. Chef's kiss.
|
Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-04-18
Votes: 36
|
Pros:
- Extremely lightweight and fast: Alpine is not only perfect for virtualization and embedded systems, but also for making the most out of old/low-end personal computers.
- Easy to use and setup: the official wiki is amazing and contains step by step tutorials for almost anything you might need. I am kind of a newbie to Linux and yet I never had any issues setting up Alpine.
- Stable as a rock: In over a month of extensive usage, including programming and gaming, I never encountered a single bug. Since packages are heavily tested before getting accepted in the main or community repositories, they're also less prone to bugs than in other distros I've tried.
Minimalistic: Alpine ships with only the bare necessities. You'll have to install everything from a desktop environment to a network manager or a sound server yourself, but the wiki makes all of these trivial. This design philosophy allows you to have absolutely zero bloatware, your computer won't have anything in it that you haven't explicitly asked for.
Cons:
- since Alpine uses musl as its c library implementation, a lot of software doesn't run on it (most notably nvidia drivers). Flatpak can mitigate this issue but you still will find some software that just can't work on Alpine.
- although as I said it's really easy to use, seeing it up requires some basic knowledge of IT terminology in order to answer the many questions the setup script will ask you. Users who are afraid of using the terminal will also have a hard time with Alpine because it doesn't come with a pre installed desktop environment
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-04-11
Votes: 28
|
I'm a Linux user since 1999. Stared with Slackware, when it was downloaded to 36 Floppy disks.
I'd worked on Salckware, Redhat, Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and recently Mint
I had started with Alpine since 3.18.
I can say that
1- Fast, very fast. I installed version 3.21 with full desktop configuration+some applications like firefox, libreoffice via automated scripts and it it took ROUND 5MINUTES!!!. Latest Mint Linux took 35 Min on the same environment.
I had successfully installed it on 256MB Ram P4 and P5. I was capable to port some old drivers for printer and scanners to Alpine. They worked fine
So, I decide to build my own Distro based on Alpine favoring it for other bloat distros.
I will focus to provide a distro for normal users working needs.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 7
Date: 2025-03-24
Votes: 3
|
Alpine, by itself alone, is truly the best distribution by far I' ve tried so far, but it has some points to be improved. I'm reporting as a desktop user, more specifically running Plasma (which works very nice).
Pros:
- The fastest distribution I've ever tested (in between Arch, BigLinux, Xiva Studio, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, OpenSUSE);
- It is quite easy to "build" from instalation, because online reference is very good and has those very helpul "setup-something" scripts;
- You get exactly what you set up on it (no bloats in any way);
- OpenRC init (I have nothing against systemd, but, this is the best distro I've tested that not rely on systemd for its init process);
- Flatpak (which is needed here, see below);
- Stable, very stable if you don't enable the edge repository;
- Fast, almost touch sensitive distro to use, with very efficient base (with musl and BusyBox, and apk, the best package manager I've seen on any O.S.).
Cons (or, to be improved):
- It has few applications in its repositories, enough for average use, but I miss some applications I can use in Arch or Mint, for example, leading me to user flatpak version of some apps;
- Lack of support, you basically have the online guide to solve issues, even the issues link on webpage has issues (it opens to me a blank page with an empty table);
- No proper Nvidia support (because of Nvidia itself not supporting musl C library) for proprietary driver;
- No language support (even Plasma doesn't allow any aditional locale/language besides C.UTF-8).
I really wish the devs would consider take this distro as a desktop O.S. with more priority, because even with these problems it's still very clean and pleasant to use.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2025-02-17
Votes: 32
|
Alpine Linux is hands down the best distribution I've ever used. After two years of relentless distro-hopping and trying nearly every distro out there, I finally discovered Alpine and fell in love. Now, all of my machines run it, and I couldn't be happier.
Alpine excels in versatility—it's perfect for gaming, schoolwork, web browsing, and more. With over 25,000 packages available in its repositories, it offers a lightweight yet an amazing and powerful experience.
The only drawback I've encountered is its hardware compatibility; it doesn't support NVIDIA systems, which prompted me to build a new PC to fully enjoy its benefits. In terms of performance, I've found Alpine to be on par with, if not better than, CachyOS and Gentoo based on my experience.
I highly recommend giving Alpine Linux a try
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.21.0
Rating: 6
Date: 2024-12-31
Votes: 7
|
At first, I fell in love with Alpine Linux. It used less RAM, was fast (it booted in a few seconds), and my experience with apk was pleasant. After trying it on physical hardware for a month or so though after getting bored of using Arch, I encountered many issues and had to make a bunch of compromises (which will be listed below).
Some general information before we get into this:
I have a pretty beefy computer, with a 9900k, 1050 Ti, and 32GB of RAM, and I also was using the alpha channel for packages.
At the time (around two months ago), I was obsessed with making my computer use the lowest amount of memory possible.
What was great:
* apk was fast, and easy to use (best package manager I have come across)
* Booted in a few seconds
* Consistently used less than 1GB of memory with a bunch of programs open, without any (just my desktop) 250MB (got as low as 154MB with 9wm).
* Used next to no storage
What wasn't all that great:
* Nouveau didn't work at all (X11 would refuse to start)
* Setting up even integrated graphics was a hassle and took nearly an entire week for me to figure out
* I was starting on C#, but sadly I could not install any programs (or vim language servers) which provided syntax highlighting and feedback (such as VSCodium) so I had to go without it
* Minecraft (which I only really use for graphical testing these days), would not launch beyond version 1.18.2
* Occasionally, my monitor would start flashing as if the refresh rate was configured incorrectly when set to 60hz
* As an extension to that, at 165hz the screen was weirdly dimmed, and at 144hz everything was fine
* A pretty major one right off the bat: the installer wouldn't boot, so I had to install Alpine completely manually from Arch. It was for sure a cumbersome experience!
* On top of all of that though, Alpine has a nearly nonexistent support community. Due to that, I had to figure out how to either solve my problems, or make less functional compromises.
After this experience, I went back to Arch. I definitely miss apk and everything I liked about Alpine, but the issues I had were simply too major for me to stay.
I personally am giving Alpine a 6/10 as I very much enjoyed everything but the issues I had with it.
If this was on a VM though, I would have definitely given it a 10/10!
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.20.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-10-20
Votes: 123
|
Alpine works pretty much out of the box in an OpenBSD vmm virtual machine is not true for most Linux distros. It boots quicker than just about any Linux I have ever seen and being very minimal it runs Firefox acceptably fast over ssh on a OpenBSD host. It boots faster and runs Firefox much faster than an OpenBSD guest on VMM. Chrome is close to same speed on both though and slower for some reason on Alpine. Would give 10 out of 10 but it doesn't come with a RBAC system out of the tin. Also haven't run it on bare metal. Perfect for resource liteish vm environments though.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.20.1
Rating: 1
Date: 2024-07-10
Votes: 1
|
Alpine Linux has SSE and SSE2 as a CPU requirement . I don't know wether it is because of this but Alpine 3.20.0 and up will also not start anymore on my Pentium I,II and III hardware. This is a enormous great pity in many aspects!
Who's next?
Most distro's that claim they're suitable for i386, i486 , i586 or i686 processors also implement SSE(2). This makes them, in fact, only suiteable for the higher end i686 processors (approx.) starting with pentium IV. Distro's that still run on Pentium I,II and III hardware are becoming very rare now. Crazy! I really did put quite some time not to find the abounded "Illegal Instruction" in i386, i486 , i586 distro's.
There is some luck because old non-active versions of Alpine linux are still there incl. the repos. And TinyCore Linux and NetBSD are active distro's that still continue respecting these old pc's. For me they seem the safest choice for now.
To be honest I have to bring my vote for Alpine Linux back from 10 to 1 for Alpine seemed to have dropped support for old computers and old computers are my passion.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 5
Date: 2024-05-31
Votes: 1
|
I've been using Alpine for 5-6 years. Headless machine for Nextcloud.
Unfortunately, each new version brought its own proper mess. No indications provided : you're on your own.
Succeeded to figure it out till 3.19->3.20 where I'm stuck (transitional package nextcloud28 can't be installed).
No support whatsoever, so I'm giving up.
Also, be aware that systemctl isn't used. No EFI install and you'll have to stick with grub (obviously not a problem in a single boot headless machine - except for grub's own mess).
A remarkable distro from dev/sysadmin to dev/sysadmin.
If you're not among the happy few, look for something more mainstream..
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-05-13
Votes: 93
|
Decided to give Alpine a spin whilst Void transitioned to Plasma 6 but I might stay with Alpine. During the installation (which was a very simple process) confused me because I thought the downloads were not working, but low and behold, they were just very fast. A download from DNF from Fedora for example would take up 15 to 20 seconds to download a 1.5GB package whilst APK from Alpine would take about 5 seconds (maybe less) for the same size, just incredible.
Alpine is very customizable in terms of packages so you can only download the stuff you need. Also Alpine uses Musl for further minimalist installs as appose to the common Glibc so there may be instances where flatpaks will be your best friend. Overall I'm really enjoying Alpine, currently using KDE with flatpaks for some gaming,general web browsing and some emulation and it has been a blast. I would not recommend to new users due to needing some knowledge on the packages you need for your build and setting up services such as dbus.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-04-21
Votes: 58
|
This is really the most clear and bloat-free Linux distro you can ever get. That's why it's called Alpine Linux, because it's so clear like the air in the Alps. The install is very straightforward, and you can easily install all of the major DEs like KDE or Xfce. It has neofetch in the repo, so how can it be a bad distro? Memory consumption is unreal, 100 MB on a fresh install without a DE. I just recently discovered this distro and I thought Arch was a minimal distro, but this is way more lean than Arch Linux.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2024-04-07
Votes: 19
|
As a long time user of Alpine, since 3.10, I must say it is the only distro that fuels my enthusiasm on the Linux world. The KISS approach (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the winning formula for me, in a software world that has become full of unnecessary complexity and TOTAL nonsense.
Pros:
- slim, tini-tiny surface of attack, easy to make it EXTREMELY secure if you know what to do
- apk is a work of art
- used it in ultra-heavy-workload virtualization/backup servers, was simply the fastest/mosty efficent distro ever
- peace of mind when you run "netstat -anp" and see that the ports that are OPEN are THE ports YOU decided were open, not some obscure binary program outside of your control (systemd?)
- full of modern features, recent kernels/libs, very well mantained overall
Cons:
- documentation is sparse, sometimes you have to figure out yourself the changes made by looking into code/init
- community is basically an IRC channel and gitlab, seeking help can be a bit difficult, but developers are generally nice
- an effort to make something like a "default desktop" would be nice, imho.
- need a bit of grinding (not really THAT much) so maybe not very easy for beginners.
The missing glibc is not really a problem, you can just make a chroot or a similar "container", or even add it straight to the system with a third-party apk repository that works beautifully (made by Sasha Gerrand and available on github).
It's the only distro I use, and probably will. I'll switch to something else only if it gets systemd. It's THE deal-breaker for me.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.19.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2024-01-10
Votes: 62
|
[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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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.18.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-09-12
Votes: 135
|
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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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.18.3
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-09-11
Votes: 5
|
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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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.18.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2023-07-30
Votes: 17
|
-1 star for LXQT for not being anything remotely ready for primetime. Buggy, incomplete, problematic. That was day 1. Installing XFCE was a gigantic relief because that would assemble and was a nifty, complete implementation.
-1 for closing their email list ("new registration no longer accepted") to people that want to join their community. Mastadon/IM just seems like a poor alternative since many of us don't want to IM.
Other than that, great adventure. I had to raise my modest skill level to make this work. It's a skeleton CLI operating with no DE, a few degrees separated from Linux From Scratch, and you are in the complete control. I loved it. If forces you to really think about what you are installing. You enable your own services.
You can read all the comments on here, or all the internet reviews, and they are all torn on one thing. Half the people believe this is just a Server distro and the other half think it's a Complete Desktop experience. I wanted a secure Daily Driver and I got one. Was it meant for this? I don't know yet.
Kudos to their fantastic and easy documentation. Problems will come up in configuring as you go, and all of mine could be remedied quickly with their information.
This has no bells and whistles or flash outside of what xfce4 offers, and if you want bells and whistles, Alpine will be happy if you go back to Ubuntu. I respect this. Alpine is very much a mindset.
I eschewed their own awall for ufw, and had to install iptables, but that's part of the fun. I pick and choose. OpenRC is fast fast fast.
I have 5 of their repos enabled and it's a modest offering with firefox and chromium the only GUI browsers really. When there are about 6-7 vim/keyboard browsers curated that should tell you something.....:) All my favorite CLI tools are there. And it supports Flatpak so I really have to be conservative in my approach but I love the option.
I like Alpine and I'm sticking with it. I wrote this on day 4 of using Alpine daily.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.18.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-05-12
Votes: 114
|
Very nice! It isn't as bloated as most other distributions, it's package manager is nice, and it's a good experience, with good security also.
It isn't without downsides though. It suffers the same issue as Void Linux (poor distro-specific documentation), and the package base is small. This forces you to sometimes manually compile things, which is often fine and also educational, but it sometimes causes headaches. There's also a heavy reliance on Flatpaks for many things.
Also, here's a tip: If you use flatpaks on here, and also use pulseaudio, use "pulseaudio --start && flatpak run [thing]" to run the aforementioned flatpaks.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.17.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-04-26
Votes: 65
|
Alpine is an Ethical, Safe, Secure, Stable, Fast, Fun and well thought out system.
I'm using it as a base operating system on a couple laptops for various programming and research projects.
The main reason I pursued using Alpine is world class security.
Having musl, a custom busybox (less suid, static links), the small foot print (in this case, less is better),
the ability to dismiss any drivers and configure the system as I see fit, sold me.
Are you tired of titanic sized, insecure systemd bloatware, "convenience model" systems leaving you open to
all sorts of attacks, built by wanna-be hackers?
then;
Use Alpine, it's solved those issues and more for me.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.17.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-04-04
Votes: 45
|
An Alpine JWM desktop can start with ~30mb memory usage.
Minimalism and extending the lifespan of a computer is my kind of hobby :o)
For me Alpine is the ideal distro for x86 32bit hardware with a desktop.
I managed smoothly streaming video's with Alpine and JWM as desktop
under 64 MB. X and JWM start up here with a total mem usage of ~30mb.
With wifi and the DRM driver blacklisted (and all DRM drivers removed in the
initramfs too to even be able to boot). Bare and stable. No bloat installed.
When Alpine v3.15+ turned towards DRM-only-drivers it became too big
and slow for 64mb. There was a too big regression in performance and
choices. So now I run v3.17.3 with the kernel from v3.14.10. Compiling the
kernel yourself is an option, but on this machine it means endless swapping
and days or even weeks of waiting ...... :o(
End of Alpine v3.14.10 is may 2023. I hope for 25 years of prolonged
sequrity updates for this version :o)
Void has no 32bit musl version.
Alpine 3.17.3 also runs on my "Multi Media Center for a Raspberry PI zero"
without the above kernel change. The X and a JWM desktop start with a
memory consumption of 41 mb (the mb's for wifi and barrier and the mrxvt
terminal to type "free" are hereby included).
GTK+2.0 is still present in the repos and DIY builds for GTK+2.0 give an
enormous powerboost. GTK+3.0 became far too heavy. No standard
webbrowser will run nicely on a rpi0 because of the also heavy javascript.
Netsurf GTK+2.0 is the (beautiful!) only one that still shows some
erformance here. But with the help of the Alpine repos streaming iptv
& ipradio is well possible with smooth running DIY grafical menu's. The
grafical chip of the RPI0/1 is a nice one and Alpine performs well here.
The APKBUILD of Alpine do not differ much from the PKGBUILD from Arch.
APKBUILD's might even be a little bit more streamlined :o)
My Fear: Is Alpine also going to bloat itself, just like the other distro's?
Indeed Windows 98 also ran on 64mb. So it seems clear that progression, in
general, means a big regression on the memory and performance side. With
far too much unnessecary material waste as a result.
All in all. Alpine is a wonderfull and very special distro!
Big thanks for Alpine that it could realize what (all?) others can't achieve in
today's memory consumption and ease.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.17.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2023-02-27
Votes: 16
|
Alpine is a very good, multi functional Linux system.
Installation process is extremely fast and easy. After installation, completing system setup and creating xfce4 desktop took me only one hour. Adding other system and application packages were very easy and fast as well.
In about less than two hours I had my system up and running with all the packages (nothing more, nothing less) I liked to have on my system. Alpine gave me a freedom that I did not have in many other Linux distros I tried before.
I had web browser, graphics and media applications, libreoffice-calc all active on my desktop and the amount of memory used was only 1.4GB. Alpine never wastes system resources. It is fast and effective.
If you are a person with little Linux experience, do not shy away from Alpine. Its documentation base is extremely useful to help you create your system easily, quickly with the way you like.
Alpine package manager apk, is the fastest package manager I have ever used. Each software package also has its documentation package separately listed (i.e. man pages).
I have been enjoying using and experimenting with Alpine on my system with no issues so far. Alpine is a quiet achiever. Go for it!..
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.17.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-02-09
Votes: 8
|
I set out to check "Build a Router" off my bucket-list. I've setup Linux distros on my home machines for more than 20 years now. I prefer Fedora for my desktop for "reasons", but Fedora server really failed me here. Between systemd-resolved, network manager, and dnsmasq, taking my amateur, basic networking skills to the next level just was NOT happening. There is FAR too much going on there.
The Alpine Linux "sys" install onto a drive is a classic, minimal Linux installation WITHOUT systemd or network manager. It was/is the best approach I could find to learn the interoperability between iptables/nftables, dnsmasq, and hostapd. Nothing seemed to work until I discovered some iptables bits on a Ubuntu forum that finally enabled comms between my LAN, WLAN, and the internet. (I did a lot of reading - books even. But all the books are old too, and describe iptables and BIND in great detail.)
As of 3.17, I found the iptables package pretty much "broken" out-of-the-box, along with dnsmasq. The dnsmasq service sets up a bridge on 10.0.x.x behind your back AND a firewall with iptables rules. The iptables package wouldn't open up my traffic with some very, very basic FORWARD rules for my subnets. nftables saved the day, but the default nftables.conf also breaks a basic home router table. I'm sure none of that makes sense. OH, and the "net.ipv4.ip_forward" bit wasn't set by default. But nftables was easy to fix. The dnsmasq service file had to be pared down to a regular service that depends on "firewall". And the nftables package provides that. Basically all of the networking HOWTOs on the Alpine wiki are old and just don't work now.
Setting up Samba for a NAS was the easy part! That HOWTO is a winner.
It's a mixed bag, but I'll take it!
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.17.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-01-26
Votes: 8
|
This is a neat little distro.
The install is pretty easy actually. I you read the manual, it's not hard to set up a desktop environment even though that is not Alpines main niche.
The package manager seems to be good and have an understandable syntax.
It's fast, has a small footprint, is independent and free from systemd. What more could you ask for?
It's perfect for a user like me who have basic needs and mainly read email and browse the web.
I'll refrain from giving it a 10 because there is no perfect distro, but a 9 for sure.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-09-17
Votes: 28
|
Mainly 20 years with Linux, tried different distro. Used Arch for long time.
Alpine is really KISS. Package management is fast, easy and reliable.
Easy to secure distro.
I've used it at first on Raspberry Pi for making a nano server for self hosting my website and my email with postfix. Now alpine is also on my main PC. Great as server OS and great for desktop for those who like minimalism. For the main PC, i'm using the edge version as it is stable and rolling...
Alpine is fast, lightweight and very pleasant.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-09-08
Votes: 19
|
Alpine is the BEST and most underrated Linux distro.
Very long-time (and still love) Slackware guy, do some admin, including some live CentOS web / blog servers, tried many distros over the years.
I stumbled into Alpine because I was looking to mess with and learn virtualization. I saw Alpine Xen recommended, and I was impressed by the small download size.
Fell in love at first login. Nothing bad to say. Many utilities link to BusyBox, but you can easily install the real one if you need the full functionality.
The only negatives, and these are mild, are:
1) "Midori" web browser just would not even run.
2) some other quirks with GUI, but I'm building CLI servers, so GUI is secondary. AND, I did not try other windowing systems, so there's more to be tried in the X / GUI department.
3) It's based on musl libraries, not glibc. I'm not expert enough to know the pros and cons, but it works. The main con: AFAIK, you can't run glibc-linked binaries- you have to get the musl version, or compile it yourself. All that said, I find every package I could want is available in Alpine repositories. (I do coding and compiling, so that wouldn't be a problem if needed).
4) From the start I've felt strongly that good package management is critical to any Linux distro. Alpine's apk works very well, but I would prefer more functionality, and maybe a GUI front-end.
Alpine is not advertised as "rolling release", but every time they've come out with a new version, apk has no problem upgrading everything correctly, no problems. So if you're looking for rolling release (very important to me), consider Alpine as being functionally rolling release.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.16.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-09-01
Votes: 22
|
One of the rare small systems for general aarch64. I installed it in UTM on Macbok Air M1 and use it with the XFCE4 desktop for daily using the web.
Alpinelinux is very small, stable and fast. I installed it in a few minutes as "system" on a hdd. The tutorials are easy to follow and work without problems.
I like it. It is independent and a very good alternative to the heavy weight *buntus. I don't need a full featured system, prepared for all needs. I searched for a small internet machine and Alpine fits this very good.
i got the XFCE4 desktop without unneeded stuff, clean and fast. I only need a browser and a terminal.
For system updates just use:
# apk update
# apk ugrade
Done.
It is really worth trying.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.16.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-06-11
Votes: 35
|
/*
The most sane distro available as of 2022.
Minimal, efficient, secure, simple, stable -- these are all words that come to mind when describing Alpine Linux.
Compared to Void Linux, Alpine is smaller, more secure, stable, and actively maintained, though both distros are excellent choices.
I look forward to a future when Alpine has its own s6-based init system (in development), though in the mean time I am happy with OpenRC.
If you want a truly minimal linux distro that does everything you want but nothing more, look no further.
*/
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.16.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-05-25
Votes: 25
|
Gave Alpine a try today and I am in LOVE! Man, this thing is super easy to get on with and is very versatile -- from simple server running just syncthing to full desktop workstation with xfce (my pref), just be sure to enable the repos.
I've been a long time Void user and will continue to use it as my daily driver. Alpine will be for servers and very possibly my HTPC since the repo has everything i need.
musl is snappy, that's a huge compliment coming from an avid Void user.
Fantastic distro. Finally gave it a try, very impressed.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-23
Votes: 66
|
Alpine Linux is pretty small and secure, it's a great and minimalistic Operating System offering an absolute perfect base for Docker images. Currently the Alpine-Linux Docker base image has about 6 megabytes on the Docker Registry.
It is based on musl as it's standard C library and Busybox which is a software suite which provides several standard tools in one executable file, especially created for low footprint operating systems.
I build Docker Images by myself so I can tell about the difference having an about thirty megabyte image where other comparable images occupy a few hundred megabytes on your harddisk by having absolutely no benefits compared to Alpine-Based images. It's exactly the opposite, as it's pretty secure by the position-independent execution technique which randomizes the position of running applications in memory and therefore minimizes attack vectors and preventing buffer overflows with it's stack smasching protection additionally.
It has apk (not to be confused with Android APKs) as it's package manager which is lean and fast and doesn't lack of any features, at least for myself. Some packages aren't available in the distribution though but I never missed anything special.
Even I just use it on console, you can install a x-windows system as Alpine supports several window managers.
The distribution and it's packages are actively maintained.
My conclusion: a small memory footprint, it's security features and no unnecessary packages installed makes it my absolute favorite Linux distribution.
This is a fire-and-forget, I just love it!
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-14
Votes: 43
|
truly a K.I.S.S. distro which gets the job done. It can be a solid workstation as well if you love flatpaks
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-02-08
Votes: 39
|
Undoubtedly my go-to linux distro for anything server based, within-reason. Since it is musl-based, there are some limitations on what binaries will run. (or compile if you roll your own packages on this platform.) It works exceedingly well as a server and the resource consumption is ridiculously smaller compared to just about everything else out there.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-01-27
Votes: 25
|
Tried it out for the first time: it was the easiest console installation processed I've ever used. Big plus was it supported encryption and even Btrfs with one environment variable.
The installation finishes really quickly and is super lightweight in terms of boot time, RAM usage, and packages. No systemd cruft. I started using this for a personal server.
Its package manager has also been really solid and easy to use.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-01-01
Votes: 32
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Underrated. Good rate for this distro is 9.5
It is compact, fast and stable.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.15.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-30
Votes: 54
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Alpine has been a fast, stable and secure distro for me. It’s a small distro and lightweight too. There are multiple uses for this distro like for a server, for Raspberry Pi, etc. The documentation is great as well. I recommend Alpine.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.14.2
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-09-29
Votes: 46
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Alpine Linux is the only Linux distribution that fits in my head. It's extremely minimal yet fast and secure, and doesn't use bloat libraries like glibc or systemd. An unfortunate result of this is that many proprietary applications simply will not work on Alpine.
apk is by far the fastest package manager, faster than even pacman with parallel downloads.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-05-28
Votes: 75
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Alpine worked out of the box on an old Kohjinsha SA1F00 UMPC running an AMD Geode CPU.
Pros - This little UMPC only has a 30GB disk and Alpine is taking next to nothing. Super fast, lightweight, setup was quick and easy.
Cons - couldn't detect the Winbond onboard wifi controller, had to purchase a $9 Panda wireless USB dongle from Amazon (which DID work right out of the gate). Also, wireless was not part of the initial install, had to do that separately, but that might be because it didn't detect the onboard card.
Running now for a week with no issues, decided against running in graphical mode due to small disk and RAM - was able to get BOINC running along with cmatrix as a terminal screensaver, so it's happily sitting on a corner of the desk churning away.
Originally was in the same camp as another reviewer about a dearth of packages, then discovered the "edge" repository, and OMG there's a boatload of them available.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 5
Date: 2021-05-08
Votes: 0
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this distro works- chromium works ,apache ok but sound cards - no ...
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.5
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-04-18
Votes: 2
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Bugs reported 5 years ago are still there...
Installation is failing on mirrors, and packages that are missing (like syslinux, etc..)
These and other bugs have been reported in their forums 5 years ago. Admins are asking for tips and solutions from the applicants and the public..
it's a ridiculous system that won't start, is buggy and totally complicated.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.3
Rating: 8
Date: 2021-03-29
Votes: 44
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This distro is probably best for servers or Docker containers because it is very light. It's easy to install and when it's installed you get to build out your system, so there arent any useless programs that you're never going to use. You get to choose what you want on your system.
Also the Alpine package manager is pretty fast but there aren't as many packages.
If you want a web server or even a simple desktop environment alpine linux is going to be more than enough.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.1
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-01-29
Votes: 43
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The base system is amazing and rock stable. The package manager is the best I've tried. It just lacks a bit of application support to iron out some glitches and make more packages available.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2021-01-26
Votes: 40
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Great community.
Great set of packages
Awesome documentation.
Fast
Runs on a wide variety of h/w
I find this distribution very flexible for creating hosts for a wide variety
of uses/functions.
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Project: Alpine Linux
Version: 3.13.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-01-14
Votes: 46
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Not only for routers, been using Alpine as my desktop system and it WORKS, it's simple, secure and the core packages are minimal.
What makes Alpine different from other distributions:
Userland: Busybox
Shell: Busybox's ash
Libc: musl libc
SSL: Libressl
init: OpenRC
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