{"slug": "alpine-linux", "name": "Alpine Linux", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "Lightweight, security-oriented Linux distribution built on musl libc and BusyBox.", "recommenders": 15, "commenters": 17, "warners": 0, "score": 13.061, "rising": 0.4, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-01", "why": "HN commenters like Alpine for being tiny, fast and simple, and run it on servers, homelabs and daily-driven laptops.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 17, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Minimal and simple", "Servers and homelab"], "caveat": "musl compatibility", "short_quote": "The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux.", "icon": true, "domain": "alpinelinux.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://alpinelinux.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Alpine Linux"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Alpine for being tiny, fast and simple", "cites": [{"id": 798751457, "item_id": 49921966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49921966", "by": "tonymet", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use alpine because each one is tiny", "excerpt": "No need for mise just run separate wsl \u201cdistros\u201d (VMs ) eg Debian-node , debian-Claude by importing root images . I use alpine because each one is tiny", "context": "", "use_case": "WSL distro images", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NSL \u2013 WSL for Linux"}, {"id": 794285184, "item_id": 49642824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642824", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux.", "excerpt": "He's right. The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux. I miss the PC version of Raspbian. It was my go-to OS for reviving very old PCs.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"When I Created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi...\""}, {"id": 772038320, "item_id": 48252395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252395", "by": "ungreased0675", "date": "2026-05-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs", "excerpt": "I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.", "context": "", "use_case": "fast minimal OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's time to talk about my writerdeck"}]}, {"text": ", and run it on servers, homelabs and daily-driven laptops.", "cites": [{"id": 743003504, "item_id": 46437719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437719", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is really good for servers.", "excerpt": "Alpine is really good for servers. Man I love alpine even though I don't use it so much but alpine does hold a special place in my heart for some reason (and i think the reasons are good) Tinycore is another one which holds a special place in my heart, partially because its the most no BS simple alpine-like os that I have seen which is rather focused on the consumer side, so you can get GUI systems super quickly and ", "context": "", "use_case": "servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FediMeteo: A \u20ac4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service"}, {"id": 775498192, "item_id": 48468637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab", "excerpt": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab except desktop (I use Void btw), because of how dirty the setup to make GPU's work with musl kernel.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}, {"id": 748735332, "item_id": 46795958, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795958", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "running firewalls, NAS and servers on Alpine is about as simple as it gets.", "excerpt": "Those that love it will fight for it. Those that hate it will simply avoid using it. There may be some commercial incentives for IBM/Redhat to push for it. Either way it will always be divisive. Some sysadmins will begrudgingly support it at work and some absolutely love to support it. I have supported it in the enterprise and I use it on gaming machines at home. (CachyOS / Bazzite). My daily drivers, servers both ph", "context": "enterprise sysadmin", "use_case": "firewalls, NAS, servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Devuan \u2013 Debian Without Systemd"}, {"id": 779731360, "item_id": 48733210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733210", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops", "excerpt": "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 `", "context": "", "use_case": "daily-driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "Void Linux", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 764153728, "item_id": 47759608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47759608", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-04-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now", "excerpt": "This seems interesting, but I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now, it has native support and ZBM is available in the community repo. Not sure what advantages Chimera would add.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop distro", "switched_from": "", "story": "Just Enough Chimera Linux"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is musl: some software such as Steam, glibc-dependent apps or GPU setups needs Flatpak, a glibc sandbox or extra work.", "cites": [{"id": 779731360, "item_id": 48733210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733210", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops", "excerpt": "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 `", "context": "", "use_case": "daily-driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "Void Linux", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 772562320, "item_id": 48285145, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285145", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Alpine", "excerpt": "This is bad news, and exactly the type of viral problem criticics of systemd warned about. Systemd advocates always downplay the issue, but here we are. I love using Alpine, and for the few packages that don't have a musl version available (e.g. Steam), flatpak has been a great way to run them. Hopefully someone will maintain a fork.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd"}, {"id": 775509488, "item_id": 48469343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469343", "by": "coppsilgold", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel.", "excerpt": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel. When glibc is required or when you just want to access the repositories of other distros you can unshare and pivot_root into the respective rootfs (using bubblewrap). There is also flatpak (uses bubblewrap internally). You can also go the extra mile and use bubblewrap to initialize the desired mount environment an", "context": "", "use_case": "boot/main rootfs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}, {"id": 775498192, "item_id": 48468637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab", "excerpt": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab except desktop (I use Void btw), because of how dirty the setup to make GPU's work with musl kernel.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Minimal and simple", "summary": "Commenters value its small size and old-school minimal, clean feel.", "quotes": [{"id": 798751457, "item_id": 49921966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49921966", "by": "tonymet", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use alpine because each one is tiny", "excerpt": "No need for mise just run separate wsl \u201cdistros\u201d (VMs ) eg Debian-node , debian-Claude by importing root images . I use alpine because each one is tiny", "context": "", "use_case": "WSL distro images", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NSL \u2013 WSL for Linux"}, {"id": 794285184, "item_id": 49642824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642824", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux.", "excerpt": "He's right. The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux. I miss the PC version of Raspbian. It was my go-to OS for reviving very old PCs.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"When I Created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi...\""}, {"id": 732727107, "item_id": 45795444, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795444", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I prefer things like alpine/void", "excerpt": "My thoughts on systemd are complicated but I wasn't around at the time of systemd Personally it is my opinion that Linux really split in two due to systemd partially because of the idea of the sheer size of systemd code There are things like https://github.com/Sweets/hummingbird which, I, not even a C person can understand and appreciate its simplicity. I am not saying that we always need such simplicity, but that I ", "context": "", "use_case": "small musl-based distro", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}, {"label": "Servers and homelab", "summary": "Used as a simple, solid base for servers, firewalls, NAS and homelab machines.", "quotes": [{"id": 743003504, "item_id": 46437719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437719", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is really good for servers.", "excerpt": "Alpine is really good for servers. Man I love alpine even though I don't use it so much but alpine does hold a special place in my heart for some reason (and i think the reasons are good) Tinycore is another one which holds a special place in my heart, partially because its the most no BS simple alpine-like os that I have seen which is rather focused on the consumer side, so you can get GUI systems super quickly and ", "context": "", "use_case": "servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FediMeteo: A \u20ac4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service"}, {"id": 748735332, "item_id": 46795958, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795958", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "running firewalls, NAS and servers on Alpine is about as simple as it gets.", "excerpt": "Those that love it will fight for it. Those that hate it will simply avoid using it. There may be some commercial incentives for IBM/Redhat to push for it. Either way it will always be divisive. Some sysadmins will begrudgingly support it at work and some absolutely love to support it. I have supported it in the enterprise and I use it on gaming machines at home. (CachyOS / Bazzite). My daily drivers, servers both ph", "context": "enterprise sysadmin", "use_case": "firewalls, NAS, servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Devuan \u2013 Debian Without Systemd"}, {"id": 775498192, "item_id": 48468637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab", "excerpt": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab except desktop (I use Void btw), because of how dirty the setup to make GPU's work with musl kernel.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "Desktop daily driver", "summary": "Several commenters daily-drive it on laptops and desktops, including with ZFS.", "quotes": [{"id": 779731360, "item_id": 48733210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733210", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops", "excerpt": "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 `", "context": "", "use_case": "daily-driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "Void Linux", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 764153728, "item_id": 47759608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47759608", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-04-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now", "excerpt": "This seems interesting, but I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now, it has native support and ZBM is available in the community repo. Not sure what advantages Chimera would add.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop distro", "switched_from": "", "story": "Just Enough Chimera Linux"}, {"id": 798340688, "item_id": 49896293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it runs Alpine very well indeed and could be a daily driver", "excerpt": "Indeed. I know of two \"best laptops ever made\": Drew DeVault says it's the X200: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Fucking-laptops/ \u00ab The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200, and I have two of them. \u00bb He has a very strong case. I own one. It is certainly one of the best ever. On the other hand, Brad Taunt says it is the X220: https://btxx.org/posts/x220/ \u00ab The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you\u2019", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "use_case": "daily driver on old ThinkPad", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google ending ChromeOS support two years early"}]}, {"label": "Speed", "summary": "Described as very fast without a GUI or many background programs.", "quotes": [{"id": 772038320, "item_id": 48252395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252395", "by": "ungreased0675", "date": "2026-05-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs", "excerpt": "I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.", "context": "", "use_case": "fast minimal OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's time to talk about my writerdeck"}, {"id": 794285184, "item_id": 49642824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642824", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux.", "excerpt": "He's right. The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux. I miss the PC version of Raspbian. It was my go-to OS for reviving very old PCs.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"When I Created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi...\""}]}, {"label": "Old hardware", "summary": "Runs well on old ThinkPads and 32-bit netbooks after other distros dropped support.", "quotes": [{"id": 798340688, "item_id": 49896293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it runs Alpine very well indeed and could be a daily driver", "excerpt": "Indeed. I know of two \"best laptops ever made\": Drew DeVault says it's the X200: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Fucking-laptops/ \u00ab The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200, and I have two of them. \u00bb He has a very strong case. I own one. It is certainly one of the best ever. On the other hand, Brad Taunt says it is the X220: https://btxx.org/posts/x220/ \u00ab The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you\u2019", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "use_case": "daily driver on old ThinkPad", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google ending ChromeOS support two years early"}, {"id": 783298112, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "uses a Samsung N130 netbook", "use_case": "OS on old netbook", "switched_from": "Arch Linux", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}]}, {"label": "Packaging and toolchain", "summary": "Easy to set up custom repositories, and its work makes llvm/musl viable for others.", "quotes": [{"id": 786351376, "item_id": 49146961, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49146961", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used alpine linux and it looks pretty easy to setup your own repository, including build scripts for packages.", "excerpt": "I used alpine linux and it looks pretty easy to setup your own repository, including build scripts for packages. I now use OpenBSD and the port systems of the BSD (each are different BTW) make it also easy to add extra software.", "context": "", "use_case": "custom package repository", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pushes to arch AUR are suspendended right now."}, {"id": 786289266, "item_id": 49143079, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143079", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "very thankful for their work, and alpine making llvm/musl a viable option for us", "excerpt": "While we are building for a dramatically different threat model, we use quite a few of their llvm patches and are very thankful for their work, and alpine making llvm/musl a viable option for us.", "context": "", "use_case": "llvm/musl base", "switched_from": "", "story": "RipGrep musl binaries occasionally segfault during very-large searches"}, {"id": 775509488, "item_id": 48469343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469343", "by": "coppsilgold", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel.", "excerpt": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel. When glibc is required or when you just want to access the repositories of other distros you can unshare and pivot_root into the respective rootfs (using bubblewrap). There is also flatpak (uses bubblewrap internally). You can also go the extra mile and use bubblewrap to initialize the desired mount environment an", "context": "", "use_case": "boot/main rootfs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "musl compatibility", "summary": "Some apps like Steam or non-Firefox browsers need Flatpak or a glibc environment.", "quotes": [{"id": 779731360, "item_id": 48733210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733210", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops", "excerpt": "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 `", "context": "", "use_case": "daily-driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "Void Linux", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 772562320, "item_id": 48285145, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285145", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Alpine", "excerpt": "This is bad news, and exactly the type of viral problem criticics of systemd warned about. Systemd advocates always downplay the issue, but here we are. I love using Alpine, and for the few packages that don't have a musl version available (e.g. Steam), flatpak has been a great way to run them. Hopefully someone will maintain a fork.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd"}, {"id": 775509488, "item_id": 48469343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469343", "by": "coppsilgold", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel.", "excerpt": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel. When glibc is required or when you just want to access the repositories of other distros you can unshare and pivot_root into the respective rootfs (using bubblewrap). There is also flatpak (uses bubblewrap internally). You can also go the extra mile and use bubblewrap to initialize the desired mount environment an", "context": "", "use_case": "boot/main rootfs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "GPU setup", "summary": "One commenter avoids it on the desktop because GPU setup with musl is messy.", "quotes": [{"id": 775498192, "item_id": 48468637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab", "excerpt": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab except desktop (I use Void btw), because of how dirty the setup to make GPU's work with musl kernel.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}]}, {"label": "Hardware support", "summary": "It lacks MIPS support, and getting it running on some devices takes know-how.", "quotes": [{"id": 786240148, "item_id": 49140009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140009", "by": "ninefathom", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Alpine can often also answer that call, but it lacks MIPS support", "excerpt": "Presently in my home you'll find Debian, Alpine, and Manjaro Linux installations running almost constantly (plus Android if you wish to be pedantic), each for their various niches. You'll also find more esoteric stuff like OpenVMS/VAX 7.3 (on actual VAX hardware), Mac OS 7.5.5 and 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 (each on their native hardware as well), and occasionally 9front or Haiku or QNX or OpenIndiana for various purposes. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "small secure system", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 765559536, "item_id": 47847471, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847471", "by": "honkcity", "date": "2026-04-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "my yearning to use Alpine on it", "excerpt": "I use their Pocket reform option pretty regularly, its a gorgeous device. The keyboard is a delight to use and the community is very friendly and helpful. The RK3588 is also plenty fast for the programming I like to get up to -- mostly writing things in Go or Ocaml for myself, but also for larger tasks its worked fine. It has rough edges but its very usable , especially for somone inclined to hack on their devices. M", "context": "uses MNT Pocket Reform", "use_case": "OS for Pocket Reform", "switched_from": "", "story": "MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany"}]}], "who": [{"by": "lproven", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "date": "2026-09-29"}, {"by": "MayeulC", "context": "uses a Samsung N130 netbook", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "date": "2026-07-18"}, {"by": "proxysna", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "date": "2026-06-09"}, {"by": "honkcity", "context": "uses MNT Pocket Reform", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847471", "date": "2026-04-21"}, {"by": "Bender", "context": "enterprise sysadmin", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795958", "date": "2026-01-28"}], "tags": ["for servers", "for homelabs", "for old hardware", "for WSL environments", "for minimalists"], "use_cases": ["servers", "wsl distro images", "daily driver on old thinkpad", "custom package repository", "llvm/musl base", "small secure system"], "compared": [{"slug": "void-linux", "name": "Void Linux", "co": 5, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openbsd", "name": "OpenBSD", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "systemd", "name": "systemd", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tiny-core-linux", "name": "Tiny Core Linux", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "arch-linux", "name": "Arch Linux", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "freebsd", "name": "FreeBSD", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alpine", "name": "alpine", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "cachyos", "name": "CachyOS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48715630", "title": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467570", "title": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49894351", "title": "Show HN: NSL \u2013 WSL for Linux", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893653", "title": "Google ending ChromeOS support two years early", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640506", "title": "\"When I Created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi...\"", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390132", "title": "Omacom Foundation Launches with $8M", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 798751457, "item_id": 49921966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49921966", "by": "tonymet", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use alpine because each one is tiny", "excerpt": "No need for mise just run separate wsl \u201cdistros\u201d (VMs ) eg Debian-node , debian-Claude by importing root images . I use alpine because each one is tiny", "context": "", "use_case": "WSL distro images", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NSL \u2013 WSL for Linux"}, {"id": 798340688, "item_id": 49896293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49896293", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it runs Alpine very well indeed and could be a daily driver", "excerpt": "Indeed. I know of two \"best laptops ever made\": Drew DeVault says it's the X200: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Fucking-laptops/ \u00ab The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200, and I have two of them. \u00bb He has a very strong case. I own one. It is certainly one of the best ever. On the other hand, Brad Taunt says it is the X220: https://btxx.org/posts/x220/ \u00ab The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you\u2019", "context": "owns ThinkPad X200/X220 machines", "use_case": "daily driver on old ThinkPad", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google ending ChromeOS support two years early"}, {"id": 794285184, "item_id": 49642824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642824", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux.", "excerpt": "He's right. The only modern Linux distro that feels to me like Linux used to feel in the 20th century -- minimal, fast, simple, clean -- is Alpine Linux. I miss the PC version of Raspbian. It was my go-to OS for reviving very old PCs.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"When I Created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi...\""}, {"id": 790247876, "item_id": 49390492, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390492", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "for servers, I mostly use debian/ubuntu or alpine", "excerpt": "For what its worth, I am part of the very young men you mention* (currently 18) and I have talked to people my age on discord who use Linux. My opinion is that I think that cachyos is a much more suitable option over omarchy. Personally out of so many of the distros that I have tried including Omarchy, I found Cachyos to be somewhat perfectly balanced (atleast for me). So I highly recommend Cachyos if you haven't alr", "context": "", "use_case": "servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omacom Foundation Launches with $8M"}, {"id": 786351376, "item_id": 49146961, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49146961", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used alpine linux and it looks pretty easy to setup your own repository, including build scripts for packages.", "excerpt": "I used alpine linux and it looks pretty easy to setup your own repository, including build scripts for packages. I now use OpenBSD and the port systems of the BSD (each are different BTW) make it also easy to add extra software.", "context": "", "use_case": "custom package repository", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pushes to arch AUR are suspendended right now."}, {"id": 786289266, "item_id": 49143079, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143079", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "very thankful for their work, and alpine making llvm/musl a viable option for us", "excerpt": "While we are building for a dramatically different threat model, we use quite a few of their llvm patches and are very thankful for their work, and alpine making llvm/musl a viable option for us.", "context": "", "use_case": "llvm/musl base", "switched_from": "", "story": "RipGrep musl binaries occasionally segfault during very-large searches"}, {"id": 786240148, "item_id": 49140009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140009", "by": "ninefathom", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Alpine can often also answer that call, but it lacks MIPS support", "excerpt": "Presently in my home you'll find Debian, Alpine, and Manjaro Linux installations running almost constantly (plus Android if you wish to be pedantic), each for their various niches. You'll also find more esoteric stuff like OpenVMS/VAX 7.3 (on actual VAX hardware), Mac OS 7.5.5 and 9.2.2 and 10.4.11 (each on their native hardware as well), and occasionally 9front or Haiku or QNX or OpenIndiana for various purposes. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "small secure system", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD 11.0 Released"}, {"id": 783298112, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "uses a Samsung N130 netbook", "use_case": "OS on old netbook", "switched_from": "Arch Linux", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 779731360, "item_id": 48733210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733210", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a general purpose distro and I've had a good time daily-driving it on laptops", "excerpt": "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 `", "context": "", "use_case": "daily-driver laptop OS", "switched_from": "Void Linux", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 779466547, "item_id": 48716659, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48716659", "by": "muvlon", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine or Devuan are right there if you need them.", "excerpt": "FWIW, debian did the gentoo approach for years. I used to run debian with OpenRC during a time when systemd was already the default. It and other init systems remained fully supported by the distro for quite a while. Eventually, the pain of supporting everything became too much and debian did go with \"my way or the highway\", which I supported at the time and still do. I have no idea how that could be \"objectively wor", "context": "", "use_case": "distro without systemd", "switched_from": "", "story": "Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian"}, {"id": 779250177, "item_id": 48703136, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48703136", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-06-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The Alpine Linux Unbound package is compiled with libnghttp2", "excerpt": "I use Unbound locally as a DoH server. The Alpine Linux Unbound package is compiled with libnghttp2, required for the built in DoH listener. That's more than enough to enable ECH [1]. I pre-cache all the domains I use hourly via cron. My ISP is not going to dork with my DNS requests and their employees are bigger deviants than I. If I ever started browsing the web from a phone I would just set up my own public DoH se", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Choosing a Public DNS Resolver"}, {"id": 775509488, "item_id": 48469343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469343", "by": "coppsilgold", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel.", "excerpt": "Alpine is a good system for the boot/main rootfs because it's rock solid and has the most recent kernel. When glibc is required or when you just want to access the repositories of other distros you can unshare and pivot_root into the respective rootfs (using bubblewrap). There is also flatpak (uses bubblewrap internally). You can also go the extra mile and use bubblewrap to initialize the desired mount environment an", "context": "", "use_case": "boot/main rootfs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}, {"id": 775498192, "item_id": 48468637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48468637", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab", "excerpt": "Alpine is my go-to nowadays for everything in my homelab except desktop (I use Void btw), because of how dirty the setup to make GPU's work with musl kernel.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": "Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released"}, {"id": 772562320, "item_id": 48285145, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285145", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Alpine", "excerpt": "This is bad news, and exactly the type of viral problem criticics of systemd warned about. Systemd advocates always downplay the issue, but here we are. I love using Alpine, and for the few packages that don't have a musl version available (e.g. Steam), flatpak has been a great way to run them. Hopefully someone will maintain a fork.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd"}, {"id": 772038320, "item_id": 48252395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252395", "by": "ungreased0675", "date": "2026-05-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs", "excerpt": "I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.", "context": "", "use_case": "fast minimal OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "It's time to talk about my writerdeck"}, {"id": 765559536, "item_id": 47847471, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847471", "by": "honkcity", "date": "2026-04-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "my yearning to use Alpine on it", "excerpt": "I use their Pocket reform option pretty regularly, its a gorgeous device. The keyboard is a delight to use and the community is very friendly and helpful. The RK3588 is also plenty fast for the programming I like to get up to -- mostly writing things in Go or Ocaml for myself, but also for larger tasks its worked fine. It has rough edges but its very usable , especially for somone inclined to hack on their devices. M", "context": "uses MNT Pocket Reform", "use_case": "OS for Pocket Reform", "switched_from": "", "story": "MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany"}, {"id": 764153728, "item_id": 47759608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47759608", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-04-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now", "excerpt": "This seems interesting, but I've been using Alpine as a desktop distro wth ZFS for years now, it has native support and ZBM is available in the community repo. Not sure what advantages Chimera would add.", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop distro", "switched_from": "", "story": "Just Enough Chimera Linux"}, {"id": 748735332, "item_id": 46795958, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795958", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "running firewalls, NAS and servers on Alpine is about as simple as it gets.", "excerpt": "Those that love it will fight for it. Those that hate it will simply avoid using it. There may be some commercial incentives for IBM/Redhat to push for it. Either way it will always be divisive. Some sysadmins will begrudgingly support it at work and some absolutely love to support it. I have supported it in the enterprise and I use it on gaming machines at home. (CachyOS / Bazzite). My daily drivers, servers both ph", "context": "enterprise sysadmin", "use_case": "firewalls, NAS, servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Devuan \u2013 Debian Without Systemd"}, {"id": 743003504, "item_id": 46437719, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437719", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Alpine is really good for servers.", "excerpt": "Alpine is really good for servers. Man I love alpine even though I don't use it so much but alpine does hold a special place in my heart for some reason (and i think the reasons are good) Tinycore is another one which holds a special place in my heart, partially because its the most no BS simple alpine-like os that I have seen which is rather focused on the consumer side, so you can get GUI systems super quickly and ", "context": "", "use_case": "servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "FediMeteo: A \u20ac4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service"}, {"id": 740084112, "item_id": 46255257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46255257", "by": "mmulet", "date": "2025-12-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use alpine for this [1] reason", "excerpt": "I use alpine for this [1] reason, but I will admit that this is a premature-optimization. I haven\u2019t actually ran into the problem myself. \u2014\u2014 Your code is great, I do basically the same thing (great minds think alike!). The only thing I want to add is that cgo supports pkg-config directly [2] via // #cgo pkg-config: $lib So you don\u2019t have to pass in linker flags manually. It\u2019s incredibly convenient. [1]https://stackov", "context": "", "use_case": "static linking Go builds", "switched_from": "", "story": "Go is portable, until it isn't"}, {"id": 738789428, "item_id": 46174339, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46174339", "by": "ifh-hn", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "And there's also Alpine too.", "excerpt": "I've used many of these small Linux distros. I used to have Tiny Core in a VM for different things. I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en, and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/ Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ And there's also Alpine too.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop"}, {"id": 732727107, "item_id": 45795444, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795444", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I prefer things like alpine/void", "excerpt": "My thoughts on systemd are complicated but I wasn't around at the time of systemd Personally it is my opinion that Linux really split in two due to systemd partially because of the idea of the sheer size of systemd code There are things like https://github.com/Sweets/hummingbird which, I, not even a C person can understand and appreciate its simplicity. I am not saying that we always need such simplicity, but that I ", "context": "", "use_case": "small musl-based distro", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}