6 ms·

Alpine – Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox

49 points by smaili 9y ago

dwe3000 9y ago
This is one of my favorite desktop distributions, even if it isn't meant for a desktop. It fits most of my minimalist needs. I think it would be my first choice if I could just figure out how to setup full disk encryption.
- joshumax 9y ago
  I use it on my cable box with < 64MB RAM! Got a minecraft server up and running on it too!
  - IntelMiner 9y ago
    Your cable box? As in, a Set Top Box?
    - joshumax 9y ago
      Yeah that's the one... my job requires me to port the Linux kernel to various embedded devices and architectures (let's just say I frequent elinux.org a lot) so work often overlaps into my personal hobbies...
- shakna 9y ago
  It's a bit of a task: [0] [0] https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_disks_manually https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_disks_manually
  - dwe3000 9y ago
    Thanks for the link!
moosingin3space 9y ago
Is LinuxKit's core system based on Alpine?
exception_e 9y ago
This is great for Docker base images.
- tuananh 9y ago
  checkout minideb as well https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/minideb/ https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/minideb/
ClausSualC 9y ago
Alpine is a really great Linux distribution and I have been using it since before the switch from uClibc to musl. However, it suffers badly from having very few maintainers and things break very often, especially if used on desktop as they don't have enough resources to properly test everything before pushing updates. Even though Alpine is security focused distribution, you will often have to wait a long time for updates to software with widely exploited security holes, again because of lack of resources, and they are no longer able to depend on grsecurity so I don't know how everything is going to turn out. Alpine is great if you want a lightweight, systemd free distribution and don't require a high level of stability, but I wouldn't have the nerve to use it for mission-critical things. If you need mission-critical stability you either have to use a big Linux distribution like Debian and Red Hat Enterprise that all come with systemd or you can use FreeBSD, that's my conclusion.
RantyDave 9y ago
You need to be aware that a few things work differently in alpine. For instance: no /bin/bash - it's /bin/ash. And you can't do "sleep inf". I'm also not convinced that musl and "stock" libc do 100% the same thing. And with regards to using it as a container base image I wonder if we might not be shooting ourselves in the foot - sure, it's a smaller image but if that's accompanied by a less efficient memory allocator then we might not be doing ourselves any favours. Not that I've done any actual research around this btw, and I do use it for a container base image (I'm just not sure this is a good idea).

49 points by smaili 9y ago

This is one of my favorite desktop distributions, even if it isn't meant for a desktop. It fits most of my minimalist needs. I think it would be my first choice if I could just figure out how to setup full disk encryption.

joshumax 9y ago
I use it on my cable box with < 64MB RAM! Got a minecraft server up and running on it too!
- IntelMiner 9y ago
  Your cable box? As in, a Set Top Box?
  - joshumax 9y ago
    Yeah that's the one... my job requires me to port the Linux kernel to various embedded devices and architectures (let's just say I frequent elinux.org a lot) so work often overlaps into my personal hobbies...
shakna 9y ago
It's a bit of a task: [0] [0] https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_disks_manually https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_disks_manually
- dwe3000 9y ago
  Thanks for the link!

moosingin3space 9y ago

Is LinuxKit's core system based on Alpine?

exception_e 9y ago

This is great for Docker base images.

tuananh 9y ago
checkout minideb as well https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/minideb/ https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/minideb/

ClausSualC 9y ago

Alpine is a really great Linux distribution and I have been using it since before the switch from uClibc to musl. However, it suffers badly from having very few maintainers and things break very often, especially if used on desktop as they don't have enough resources to properly test everything before pushing updates. Even though Alpine is security focused distribution, you will often have to wait a long time for updates to software with widely exploited security holes, again because of lack of resources, and they are no longer able to depend on grsecurity so I don't know how everything is going to turn out. Alpine is great if you want a lightweight, systemd free distribution and don't require a high level of stability, but I wouldn't have the nerve to use it for mission-critical things. If you need mission-critical stability you either have to use a big Linux distribution like Debian and Red Hat Enterprise that all come with systemd or you can use FreeBSD, that's my conclusion.

RantyDave 9y ago

You need to be aware that a few things work differently in alpine. For instance: no /bin/bash - it's /bin/ash. And you can't do "sleep inf". I'm also not convinced that musl and "stock" libc do 100% the same thing. And with regards to using it as a container base image I wonder if we might not be shooting ourselves in the foot - sure, it's a smaller image but if that's accompanied by a less efficient memory allocator then we might not be doing ourselves any favours. Not that I've done any actual research around this btw, and I do use it for a container base image (I'm just not sure this is a good idea).