3 ms·

Alpine linux seems to be doing fine without systemd.

stevefan1999 4y ago
But I almost never saw anyone using Alpine as the infrastructural distro for their, say like desktop environment akin to Manjaro and Fedora. Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess. Well, maybe you would say Alpine is not intented to run heavyweight stuff like that and is mostly focused on security and containers. That's exactly what Alpine is, the OpenBSD of Linux distros. OpenBSD likewise cannot be used as your production powerhouse as well.
- HNDV 4y ago
  >never saw anyone using Alpine as the infrastructural distro for their, say like desktop environment akin to Manjaro and Fedora Alpine runs musl libc. This makes it buggy with all sorts of software that rely on glibc-isms, that makes it incompatible with proprietary drivers like NVIDIA and make it harder to run proprietary/binary software on the userland. musl is developed by people with that sort of break-everything attitude : https://twitter.com/RichFelker/status/994629795551031296 https://twitter.com/RichFelker/status/994629795551031296 There is a world of pain that awaits anyone with the expectation that this sort of distro could be used on a workstation. Musl is really meant to be run.. with software vetted by communities like https://suckless.org/ https://suckless.org/ Meaning things like dwm, dmenu, st. Which may or may not be one's cup of tea. It certainly ain't mine.
  - biorach 4y ago
    That's an inaccurate and quite uncharitable representation of what musl is about.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    Bad argument, glibc and musl are not always compatible, and you can use that as argument against either. When it comes to standards, musl is actually the more conformant one. The glibc 2.26 release with the ucontext breakages made me stick with musl. Plus, when i did multiarch support in Alpine later, i found that LDSO paths for musl are much more systematically and don't have name collisions like glibc.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Musl is mostly a good libc. There are some very unfortunate ideological choice made by its author but they are not the one you quote. The reluctance to give developers a way to detect Musl from C code would be a better exemple. It’s both annoying and counterproductive.
- blueflow 4y ago
  Now you do! I'm writing you right now from a Alpine Laptop. > Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess startx on tty1, i3 being launched from xinitrc. Same procedure that i use on any other distro or BSD.
- effie 4y ago
  > Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess What is a complicated desktop environment? Why should I run it? I want to run simple desktop environment, like Xfce. I run startx in tty, and get unprivileged Xorg with Xfce on sysvinit system. It's rock solid.
cultofmetatron 4y ago
alpine linux is a minimalist distro intended for running a single process within a container. I guarantee the base OS the container is running on us running systemD.
- gizzlon 4y ago
  No: "Alpine Linux is an independent, non-commercial, general purpose Linux distribution designed for power users who appreciate security, simplicity and resource efficiency."
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    who out there is using alpine as their daily driver desktop? the only time I've ever seen it used is as the base image for docker containers precisely because its so minimal (ie: lower attack surface area)
    - WhyNotHugo 4y ago
      pmOS[1] is based on alpine (for phones and tablets). I believe ddvault uses alpine on his daily driver, and sourcehut itself also runs on alpine. I've considered it a lot, but I'm still to attached to service activations and a few other features from systemd --user. [1]: https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/

stevefan1999 4y ago

But I almost never saw anyone using Alpine as the infrastructural distro for their, say like desktop environment akin to Manjaro and Fedora. Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess. Well, maybe you would say Alpine is not intented to run heavyweight stuff like that and is mostly focused on security and containers. That's exactly what Alpine is, the OpenBSD of Linux distros. OpenBSD likewise cannot be used as your production powerhouse as well.

HNDV 4y ago
>never saw anyone using Alpine as the infrastructural distro for their, say like desktop environment akin to Manjaro and Fedora Alpine runs musl libc. This makes it buggy with all sorts of software that rely on glibc-isms, that makes it incompatible with proprietary drivers like NVIDIA and make it harder to run proprietary/binary software on the userland. musl is developed by people with that sort of break-everything attitude : https://twitter.com/RichFelker/status/994629795551031296 https://twitter.com/RichFelker/status/994629795551031296 There is a world of pain that awaits anyone with the expectation that this sort of distro could be used on a workstation. Musl is really meant to be run.. with software vetted by communities like https://suckless.org/ https://suckless.org/ Meaning things like dwm, dmenu, st. Which may or may not be one's cup of tea. It certainly ain't mine.
- biorach 4y ago
  That's an inaccurate and quite uncharitable representation of what musl is about.
- blueflow 4y ago
  Bad argument, glibc and musl are not always compatible, and you can use that as argument against either. When it comes to standards, musl is actually the more conformant one. The glibc 2.26 release with the ucontext breakages made me stick with musl. Plus, when i did multiarch support in Alpine later, i found that LDSO paths for musl are much more systematically and don't have name collisions like glibc.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Musl is mostly a good libc. There are some very unfortunate ideological choice made by its author but they are not the one you quote. The reluctance to give developers a way to detect Musl from C code would be a better exemple. It’s both annoying and counterproductive.
blueflow 4y ago
Now you do! I'm writing you right now from a Alpine Laptop. > Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess startx on tty1, i3 being launched from xinitrc. Same procedure that i use on any other distro or BSD.
effie 4y ago
> Without systemd, bootstrapping a complicated desktop environment would be a hot mess What is a complicated desktop environment? Why should I run it? I want to run simple desktop environment, like Xfce. I run startx in tty, and get unprivileged Xorg with Xfce on sysvinit system. It's rock solid.

cultofmetatron 4y ago

alpine linux is a minimalist distro intended for running a single process within a container. I guarantee the base OS the container is running on us running systemD.

gizzlon 4y ago
No: "Alpine Linux is an independent, non-commercial, general purpose Linux distribution designed for power users who appreciate security, simplicity and resource efficiency."
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  who out there is using alpine as their daily driver desktop? the only time I've ever seen it used is as the base image for docker containers precisely because its so minimal (ie: lower attack surface area)
  - WhyNotHugo 4y ago
    pmOS[1] is based on alpine (for phones and tablets). I believe ddvault uses alpine on his daily driver, and sourcehut itself also runs on alpine. I've considered it a lot, but I'm still to attached to service activations and a few other features from systemd --user. [1]: https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/