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Alpine Linux and Void are the only mainstream enough distro I can think of as an interest for my planB. But I wonder how good Alpine is for desktop computing a

Alpine Linux and Void are the only mainstream enough distro I can think of as an interest for my planB. But I wonder how good Alpine is for desktop computing and development stuff. I know they have recently started shipping full DEs for desktop IIRC. Anyone with any experiences?

yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
> Alpine Linux and Void are the only mainstream enough distro I can think of as an interest for my planB. Consider Gentoo as well? They have decent binary package availability now which reduces the compilation needed. > But I wonder how good Alpine is for desktop computing and development stuff. I know they have recently started shipping full DEs for desktop IIRC. How do you mean? You can install whatever graphical system you want on Alpine. I've got Alpine boxes running i3 and KDE, which seems like the full spectrum. > Anyone with any experiences? Alpine is great. I've run it on desktops, laptops, headless, and a Steam Deck and it's been mostly a good time. As you kinda allude to, it really shines on underpowered machines by being so light.
- unsungNovelty 4mo ago
  >How do you mean? Alpine was more for container environment right? So I was wondering how it has been for normal usage and apps. Especially with MUSL etc
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
    IIRC Alpine was originally built largely for embedded networking gear, then because of its small size came to be favored in container images (where smaller images are a selling point), but it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops. If apps/musl are a problem you can just install flatpak, but off the top of my head I've only needed that for Steam and non-firefox browsers (but `apk add firefox` works fine). Actually, a funny thing is that I used to daily-drive Void, and I do remember having more problems there because of musl. But I think that may have been mostly a chromium or webkit problem with... something about how Void+musl did memory allocations? I forget. Anyways, I'm pretty sure even that would be fixed with firefox or flatpak so w/e.
    - unsungNovelty 4mo ago
      Thank you! I'll definitely try it out this or next week.

yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago

> Alpine Linux and Void are the only mainstream enough distro I can think of as an interest for my planB. Consider Gentoo as well? They have decent binary package availability now which reduces the compilation needed. > But I wonder how good Alpine is for desktop computing and development stuff. I know they have recently started shipping full DEs for desktop IIRC. How do you mean? You can install whatever graphical system you want on Alpine. I've got Alpine boxes running i3 and KDE, which seems like the full spectrum. > Anyone with any experiences? Alpine is great. I've run it on desktops, laptops, headless, and a Steam Deck and it's been mostly a good time. As you kinda allude to, it really shines on underpowered machines by being so light.

unsungNovelty 4mo ago
>How do you mean? Alpine was more for container environment right? So I was wondering how it has been for normal usage and apps. Especially with MUSL etc
- yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
  IIRC Alpine was originally built largely for embedded networking gear, then because of its small size came to be favored in container images (where smaller images are a selling point), but it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops. If apps/musl are a problem you can just install flatpak, but off the top of my head I've only needed that for Steam and non-firefox browsers (but `apk add firefox` works fine). Actually, a funny thing is that I used to daily-drive Void, and I do remember having more problems there because of musl. But I think that may have been mostly a chromium or webkit problem with... something about how Void+musl did memory allocations? I forget. Anyways, I'm pretty sure even that would be fixed with firefox or flatpak so w/e.
  - unsungNovelty 4mo ago
    Thank you! I'll definitely try it out this or next week.