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Alpine Linux 3.13

alpinelinux.org

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#11
post #2

I want to like Alpine because it's so light, but realistically you can only ever use it in Docker / VMs or for very specific locked-down needs. The musl libc makes it a bad choice for general purpose desktop use (look at the number of hacks required to get some version of VSCode running on it for example).

VScode as a piece of software is profoundly incompatible with the philosophy of Alpine so this isn't too surprising.

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#12
post #9

Another "I want to love Alpine but can't" user here. Their use of musl libc makes it a very poor choice for running python in a container, because it forces a lot of manual rebuilding since the PyPi wheels don't work on Alpine, among other issues [1] [1] https://pythonspeed.com/articles/alpine-docker-python/

Out of curiosity, which container have you settled on instead? debian:buster-slim?

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#13
post #9

Another "I want to love Alpine but can't" user here. Their use of musl libc makes it a very poor choice for running python in a container, because it forces a lot of manual rebuilding since the PyPi wheels don't work on Alpine, among other issues [1] [1] https://pythonspeed.com/articles/alpine-docker-python/

So just use the glibc compat layer, or also install glibc.

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Running_glibc_programs

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#15
post #9

Another "I want to love Alpine but can't" user here. Their use of musl libc makes it a very poor choice for running python in a container, because it forces a lot of manual rebuilding since the PyPi wheels don't work on Alpine, among other issues [1] [1] https://pythonspeed.com/articles/alpine-docker-python/

So just use the glibc compat layer, or also install glibc. https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Running_glibc_programs

this page really should be updated, at this point all you basically have to do is `apk add gcompat`.

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#16
post #2

I want to like Alpine because it's so light, but realistically you can only ever use it in Docker / VMs or for very specific locked-down needs. The musl libc makes it a bad choice for general purpose desktop use (look at the number of hacks required to get some version of VSCode running on it for example).

I run Alpine on bare metal as my home server, very happy with it. I do run Ubuntu on my laptop/desktop.

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#17
Recently, I migrated my personal dev laptop from Ubuntu to Alpine Linux. It took a day, but everything works now, including hidpi stuff.

No big issues so far and I am in the process of migrating my home server to Alpine.

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#18
post #7

I would love for Alpine to progress to the point where it's a realistic desktop or server OS, rather than the OS for the containers that run on an Ubuntu or Debian server. Edit: Just got inspired and went to the contributing page. Think I'll start using it to develop with Vim in a VM locally and see where things go from there.

What is it missing that makes you feel it is unrealistic?

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#19
post #9

Another "I want to love Alpine but can't" user here. Their use of musl libc makes it a very poor choice for running python in a container, because it forces a lot of manual rebuilding since the PyPi wheels don't work on Alpine, among other issues [1] [1] https://pythonspeed.com/articles/alpine-docker-python/

I believe Alpine isn't meant to be used with pip, npm, and the like. Instead you are encouraged to create alpine packages out of your dependecies and submit them upstream. Writing a new package is completely trivial in Alpine, that's one of the things that made me switch to it.

Re: Alpine Linux 3.13

#20
post #18
post #7

I would love for Alpine to progress to the point where it's a realistic desktop or server OS, rather than the OS for the containers that run on an Ubuntu or Debian server. Edit: Just got inspired and went to the contributing page. Think I'll start using it to develop with Vim in a VM locally and see where things go from there.

What is it missing that makes you feel it is unrealistic?

I am thinking more about adoption - and things that come with adoption - than functionality.

It's not an option for which OS to flash onto my DigitalOcean VM. Getting it going on Raspberry Pi is largely undocumented.

For desktop, it doesn't (officially) support many window managers or desktops.

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