{"slug": "apk", "name": "apk", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.559, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-01-29", "latest": "2026-03-24", "why": "I think it's a wonderful way for a package manager to operate.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I think it's a wonderful way for a package manager to operate.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/apk-tools", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["apk"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 760107731, "item_id": 47506733, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47506733", "by": "kelvie", "date": "2026-03-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I was honestly shocked at how fast apk installs packages on alpine", "excerpt": "One of the reasons I switched to arch from debian based distros was precisely how much faster pacman was compared to APT -- system updates shouldn't take over half an hour when I have a (multi)gigabit connection and an SSD. It was mostly precipitated by when containers came in and I was honestly shocked at how fast apk installs packages on alpine compared to my Ubuntu boxes (using apt)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew"}, {"id": 752379188, "item_id": 47023699, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023699", "by": "JCattheATM", "date": "2026-02-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I much prefer apk to pacman or xbps, or apt and rpm for that matter", "excerpt": "Arch always turned me off with it's rolling release schedule, and I wasn't that impressed with pacman to be honest. I used to love Slack, but they lost their way trying to compete with Ubuntu and the like. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was for mplayer to have samba as a dependency, and the community saying a full install was the intended way to run Slack. 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