What jobs/tasks is Alpine Linux the best at?
#1
Thu, 2016-04-14 19:13
trpted
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- Offline
- 1 year 11 months ago
- 2016-04-14
For example non OS:
A hammer is the best to get in a nail. Could use a screw driver, but that is not the best tool for the job/task.
Comparing Alpine Linux to other distros in the same category (not for example against pfSense - one of many distros designed for connection sharing), what jobs/task is it the best at?
Thank you
For me Alpine is absolutely perfect as:
1. A linux container (LXC) and/or KVM-based guest. Just compare its size/productivity with the same container based on Debian/Fedora/etc...
2. A linux desktop on computers with x86_64 architecture (and i915 video). I haven't seen before any distro faster, smaller and easier to configure than AL. And a cherry on a cake is no systemd!!!
3. A distro for SOC/embedded system.
There is nothing you can't do with Alpine Linux. Apologies for the double negative.
More specifically, you might say that Alpine Linux fits in the "power user" category (although AL is also a great learning environment). It's not really about "What jobs/tasks is Alpine Linux the best at", but rather "Does Alpine Linux fit in with the way I like to do things"? To answer that, you have to dive in, preferably with a project/requiremet (something to do) and see if you fall in love all over again. It's very much about building stuff. Any stuff.
Probably best to illustrate the versatility of the distro by sharing what I'm using it for:
a) AL as dom0 for Xen w/ a number of domU
b) One of domU is a django dev environment w/ Alpine as the OS:
(*) django
(*) also running Codiad web-ide
(*) git
c) am installing another Alpine instance for desktop use (browsing etc).
d) in the to-do list: Alpine as a VPN server for remote access.
I think it makes a fantastic desktop, works very well indeed on my ThinkPad X201
Some configuration is required but I would rather do that than have to strip away all the stuff I don't want.
I know about alpine linux since a long time ago, I bookmarked its home page, just in case, till today I'm afraid to take the risk and play with it, since I'm afraid that after it did his nasty job in erasing the whole hdd to install itself, then I'm going to find myself with just a terminal with no clue how to use my wifi and how to get back xorg and my preferred desktop manager as I'm currently using, Debian with xfce. not to lie, I hate configuring xorg and any DE from scratch , it's a lot of work that I don't need, since there are a lot of ready to go out there.
@bonbonboi: it is possible to dual-boot Alpine with your Debian system:
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_on_HDD_dualbooting
I use this grub.cfg:
https://github.com/Head-on-a-Stick/configs/blob/4737ff0406d8009545e4c853fa42cd18191b1e13/grub.cfg.alpine
I was using Arch to install & control GRUB but the latest version from git will compile under Alpine and I now use the native version to boot the machine.
Alpine is great to build small docker images.
At the moment I'm playing with Alpine as base to build a docker based desktop (xorg, fluxbox, chromium, ...) :)
Absolutely the lightest and second fastest (after Devuan but that is a lot heaver) LAMP server (although I am benchmarking using SQLite3, not MySQL/MariaDB). I am running a LAMP instance in a Virtual Box VM with 128mb of RAM. Fantastic. Perfect for an Atom-based LAMP server. I am using Edge and Alpine's update speed and time to completion puts everything else to shame.
Rick