My 2 cents. I have been using Alpine Linux as my main Linux distro for... I don't know how long, but probably more than 5 years at this point.

My only issues have been:

* Nvidia proprietary drivers (when I was building a PC with an old GPU).

* DRM (Netflix).

* I think I also had problems with SQLite3 while trying to install the Twitch test server thingy inside an Alpine container.

Other than that it's just minor things, just like every distro has some things that are different but no big deal.

> I think that, if you have a very consistent usage of Alpine, where you are mostly doing the same thing and using the same tools, you could find a comfy workflow there.

Yeah, or in my case it's because I try to keep the host minimalist and clean, and do most of the dirty/experimentation stuff in Docker, just to be able to nuke it from orbit once I'm done.

It's also dumbproof to make your own native packages if you want, for example if you want to use fonts but you can't just `git clone` because they require a build step (!).

Apparently some people have had issues with DNS, but I've never had any. I don't know if it's because I always point to my Unbound instance for DNS, or if it's just been a coincidence.

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LeFantome 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Agreed. I find it quite rare to find something that does not build on MUSL. When I do, it is software that goes out of its way to abuse GNU specific stuff.

The most common problem for me is software distributed as binary that links to Glibc. That shows up on surprise places. For example, building the Ladybird browser uses vcpkg which needs Glibc. In these cases, I reach for Distrobox.

Pretty sure the DNs behaviour in MUSL was changed and is no longer an issue.

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m463 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

and I thought arch was minimalist.

You're like a long-term classic-era-john-deere minimalist.

Personally I use it in multistage dockerfiles for when I do things like wget or file manipulation.

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jfim 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Out of curiosity, what are the reasons for using Alpine as opposed to something more mainstream like say Ubuntu?

	▲	quectophoton 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Nowadays it's mostly inertia. But I think it all began with disliking systemd and at the same time being obsessed with ricing and minimalism. Tiling window managers, simple terminals, LuaKit as a web browser (!), stuff like that. Back then I was young and had very strong opinions, and also had the time to be switching OS whenever I wanted, and apparently I didn't mind setting up stuff again and again (ugh). My first choice was actually Artix Linux, but it broke at some point. I was already using Alpine Linux and FreeBSD in VPSs (Linode and Digital Ocean respectively), and they were still working fine so they seemed stable enough, so I started experimenting with installing FreeBSD locally and just setting up i3wm on it (also Poudriere got me curious about compiling packages by myself with only the flags I needed). Then when I got a laptop I went with Alpine Linux there, it was already a minimal distro that I was familiar with, so if I could get i3wm working there it should be good enough. And I have survived with them so far with no reason to change, so it's probably just coincidence that I was using Alpine Linux (and FreeBSD) when I decided to "settle down". But like I said, today it's mostly inertia, just a personal preference thing like buying Ketchup from a specific brand whenever possible because I'm most used to how this one tastes but no big deal if it's not available. It hasn't given me any surprises or any annoyances big enough for me to seriously consider switching. I do have Linux Mint on a third[1] computer tho, mostly for Steam, but ready to be quickly repurposed in case of any surprises. I still have some leftover dislike of systemd and its scope creep, but it's not a religious dislike like back then; today it's similar to a "why does this website have 20MB of JavaScript just to show text and why does it ask for my location"-kind of dislike, but back then was like "the GNU Project declaring war against any software that doesn't use specifically a GNU license even if that software has an OSI-approved license"-kind of dislike. Recently when I used Hetzner for some stuff and found out they don't have Alpine Linux or FreeBSD as (easy) choices, I was like "oh well, Fedora it is". So yeah, there you have it. [1]: Why a third computer? Well, you can thank two spicy pillow incidents for that. Don't buy Medion laptops.