
Alpine Linux 3.4.4 released - tete
https://alpinelinux.org/posts/Alpine-3.4.4-released.html
======
ubercow
Originally learned about Alpine as a base image for Docker, but now I pretty
much use Alpine for all "Raspberry Pi and Friends" projects.

Since it runs entirely out of ram by default, it solves a lot of issues with
having to "safe shutdown" these computers.

My only complaint is that it's difficult to "pre-bake" the Raspberry Pi
images, through something like CI.

------
duck2
I tried Alpine as my desktop around 4 months ago, but the documentation felt
very insufficient. Just to install Firefox I had to change my repository URLs,
and this wasn't mentioned anywhere, I only found out when I searched for the
Firefox package to see where it is- "testing".

Furthermore the built-in Lynx does not have HTTPS support, so you cannot read
"How to get regular stuff working"[0] before magically switching to the
testing repository and installing Firefox. Not to mention that article is
essential if you want to compile Lynx with HTTPS enabled. (the gcc pkg is not
dependent on build-base and just doing apk install gcc won't result in a
working gcc)

Having said that, the choices of OpenRC over systemd, busybox ash over [insert
bloated shell here] and musl-libc over glibc are remarkable. Also xorg-base-
install(or something like that) and similar scripts are very useful and
definitely helped me get going.

0:
[https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/How_to_get_regular_stuff_w...](https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/How_to_get_regular_stuff_working)

~~~
JdeBP
Static Linux also chooses musl:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588854)

And choosing the Almquist shell is not _that_ remarkable, when one realizes
that Ubuntu and Debian both did.

~~~
duck2
Well I did not know dash is debian almquist shell, thanks.

However the Wikipedia page says the standard login shell is still bash for
Debian and Ubuntu, while Alpine uses ash all around.

------
drudru11
If they were based on runit, or at least made it easy to switch to that... I
would install right now.

~~~
JdeBP
Then you might be interested in [http://www.mail-
archive.com/supervision@list.skarnet.org/msg...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/supervision@list.skarnet.org/msg01127.html) and surrounding
discussion.

~~~
drudru11
Ah - thx for that.

