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Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

wiki.alpinelinux.org

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Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#41

Post by Zhyl »

tus666 wrote: post #38

Worrying about linux distros seems so antiquated in this serverless cloud computing world. Or at least so last decade.

While the difference between some distros is almost academic, other distros have very strong principles that lead them to having very different forms and functions. Alpine falls into that category - if one were to not 'worry' about distros as you seem to be suggesting and downloaded Alpine without reading up on it, you would likely be put out by what you find.

Alpine is a distro with a purpose, and that is worth 'worrying' about.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#42

Post by Cymen »

zalebz wrote: post #33

Question, we're a long time Windows shop and just recently have been spinning up some linux containers (redis, rabbitmq). The decision fell to me and I went with Ubuntu. (I'm confident in our networking team that everything is firewalled well and not externally accessible so these are local LAN only.) Should I instead be using Alpine? If someone is isn't distro aficionado and is utilizing "mainstream" docker images,…

I think Ubuntu server is a fine choice for your needs. I tend to use it on small VPSes as it's easy to setup and get running, relatively up to date and in wide usage.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#43

Post by zamalek »

zalebz wrote: post #33

Question, we're a long time Windows shop and just recently have been spinning up some linux containers (redis, rabbitmq). The decision fell to me and I went with Ubuntu. (I'm confident in our networking team that everything is firewalled well and not externally accessible so these are local LAN only.) Should I instead be using Alpine? If someone is isn't distro aficionado and is utilizing "mainstream" docker images,…

Distros seem to be having a hard time updating glibc, and there are known vulnerabilities with the pinned version of most of them. Musl/Alpine doesn't have that problem, because it doesn't use glibc.

Ubuntu comes with snaps. If you don't use snaps, they are consuming a not insignificant portion of boot time. Use Debian if you need something glib-based. If you must use Ubuntu, make sure you are using slim: you don't need manpages etc. in a production container.

Overall boot time is affected by image size, because your cluster has to download that image from $SERVER. Alpine is smaller than most, scratch is even better (if you can pull it off). Building containers with Nix can result in stupidly small images.

Its not clear-cut, but hopefully that helps you make a choice.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#44

Post by phphphphp »

bobobob420 wrote: post #18

I saw a thread the other day on docker command pull alpine:latest is not good. Im pretty sure like every enterprise docker container is running this command. Anyone see anyone change this or bring this up at work?

They’re probably referring to the “latest” tag. The “latest” tag is a terrible idea to be anywhere near anything that matters but I’d be very surprised if any enterprise is depending on a latest tag.

Digest pinning is what should be used in any system that matters.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#45

Post by teawrecks »

Tenoke wrote: post #15

>due to the great popularity of Docker, Alpine Linux is one of the most deployed operating systems currently in use Wow, that's impressive! However, when I check on Distrowatch it's only in the 30s. Is there a better statistic? Something more representative of actual amounts of installs on anything at all?

iirc every intel cpu runs minix on its management engine. Might be a contender.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#46

Post by electroly »

ghotli wrote: post #31
jupp0r wrote: post #26

I use it mostly as a build image in order to produce completely static binaries which isn't possible with most other distros because the glibc maintainers at some point in the distant past decided to impose their opinion on the matter upon you by making it impossible to statically link against glibc.

I've done the same alpine trick for static binaries but may I introduce you to musl-cross-make? https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make Just burned out static toolchains that make me static binaries for all architectures gcc supports. Much like musl.cc but they suggest building your own and I do. I use these toolchains on debian (/ anywhere a non-ancient linux kernel runs) to make static binaries, you can too!

When I looked into this, I decided against musl-cross-make because all the tools in there are way out of date. Due to its use of custom patches, you can't easily update it yourself; you must use their specific outdated versions. They're a full major version behind on gcc (it was two major versions behind at the time), and they're two minor versions behind on musl itself. Binutils is five minor versions behind. It was much easier to just fire up an Alpine build container with the latest versions of everything, and I'm actually capable of keeping it up to date. The Alpine folks seem to have more manpower at their disposal for keeping the packages up to date with upstream.

Re: Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro

#49

Post by [deleted] »

Macha wrote: post #39

> Keep in mind that today due to the great popularity of Docker, Alpine Linux is one of the most deployed operating systems currently in use, because within every other operating system that uses docker, the docker image it uses is almost always Alpine Linux. Isn't this a little overstated? I'm willing to accept it has a majority, especially once you get into custom images, but e.g. docker's library images are usuall…

[deleted]
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