[HN Gopher] Alpine Linux Minimalist Desktop
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Alpine Linux Minimalist Desktop
Author : clay-dreidels
Score : 54 points
Date : 2022-10-17 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| piaste wrote:
| Strange choice. There's no shortage of minimalist desktop-
| oriented distros out there. Even if you specifically want a musl-
| based distros, Void Linux has a minimal base image which is
| probably a better starting point.
|
| I don't see much advantage in forcing an embedded/VM-oriented
| distro to do desktop work - how much fun are you going to have
| with device drivers, for example?
|
| The only reason I can see to use Alpine specifically is to test
| on a system that's as close to production servers as possible.
| But that's what VMs are for.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Strange choice. There's no shortage of minimalist desktop-
| oriented distros out there. Even if you specifically want a
| musl-based distros, Void Linux has a minimal base image which
| is probably a better starting point.
|
| Why not? Alpine is a perfectly good distro.
|
| > I don't see much advantage in forcing an embedded/VM-oriented
| distro to do desktop work - how much fun are you going to have
| with device drivers, for example?
|
| What? Alpine is a Linux distro; it has the same drivers as
| everything else. And it packages desktop stuff just fine; I've
| never had a problem using it.
|
| EDIT: I should qualify "never" - I've had less trouble using
| Alpine as a desktop than Void, let's say. Some programs aren't
| portable enough to handle musl, but that's a different issue.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Linux devs: "I've got it, let's make another minimalistic GUI
| that doesn't have enough functionality for daily use."
|
| Also Linux devs: "Wait, why is nobody using Linux on desktop?"
|
| Half kidding since those lightweights do have use cases, but on
| the other hand KDE only barely gets close to the levels of
| functionality and customization that Windows offers and it's
| about the heaviest display manager out there. Meanwhile Gnome
| is both slow and just about completely hardcoded hah.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Linux devs: "I've got it, let's make another minimalistic
| GUI that doesn't have enough functionality for daily use."
|
| As a person daily-driving it, I promise it does in fact have
| enough functionality for daily use. And are you sure those
| are the same people? My impression is that there are two
| groups; minimalist hackers who want an ultra-light system and
| build that, and people who want a system that's easy to use
| for the masses and build that (KDE, GNOME, XFCE). And because
| it's FOSS and mostly unpaid, people work individually on the
| things that they directly value, hence the wide range of
| options.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Agreed. We don't need more desktops, we should improve the
| ones we have.
|
| Speaking of improvements, if you haven't tried KDE in a
| while, it has become considerably lighter in recent years. It
| is quite a bit snappier as well.
|
| Skipping the indexing features, it gets pretty close to Xfce,
| MATE and LXDE in resource usage.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'm actually running KUbuntu 20.04 on one of my machines
| right now and it's honestly really good (outside some
| occasional annoying shit that'll be ironed out eventually I
| hope), but I'm running it from an SSD with fairly decent
| hardware so it's hard to say anything about performance.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I tried OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a couple weeks back on a
| Raspberry Pi 4 and found the experience tolerable.
|
| Of course, tolerable is a subjective term.
| moffkalast wrote:
| This reminds me, someone needs to make an open source
| remake of Among Us and call it OpenSUS
| pmontra wrote:
| Sometimes we don't need a desktop for daily use. Example: I'm
| considering a minimal desktop to just run VLC on a file
| server and display videos to my TV.
| anthk wrote:
| Just run XBMC from Lightdm in any OS.
| warent wrote:
| Why not just run a media sever like Emby and stream the
| videos directly?
| xupybd wrote:
| To me it seems that the simpler option is to run VLC
| directly connected to the tv. Streaming is seamless now
| and Emby makes it easy but why have all that complexity
| involved when you can just play in VLC and get a better
| quality video?
| warent wrote:
| sorry my brain read "VLC" as "VNC" and I was thinking you
| were watching videos over remote desktop LOL
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Could turn this entirely into a shell script per reboot with
| "expect", I... uh, expect. Or just one shell script with a little
| more cleverness (to initiate the next phase after each reboot,
| automatically).
|
| ... though I'm not sure whether "expect" is in base Alpine, or
| you'd have to install it, defeating most of the purpose.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > ... though I'm not sure whether "expect" is in base Alpine,
| or you'd have to install it, defeating most of the purpose.
|
| It's not on the default system if that's what you mean, but
| it's packaged as
| https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/v3.16/main/x86_64/expec...
| so you could at least install it partway in and rerun that way.
|
| Depending on the goal you might be better off using
| https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_local_backup to save
| the system.
| mackatsol wrote:
| I've never heard of it. Can you provide some details on what it's
| about? Why you chose it.. and so on?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Alpine? It's tiny
| emptypuru wrote:
| Been using alpine for a year as my daily driver. Initially
| switched from Arch to better understand postmarketos, but found
| alpine very pleasant and stayed with it. With alpine it feels
| easier to understand how a distro works due to minimality. Also
| it's easier to jump into sources of little busybox utils rather
| than their full-blown util-linux/coreutils/systemd counterparts.
| And apk is faster than pacman.
| nathants wrote:
| i've been running alpine on two thinkpads for almost six months.
| it's fantastic. was previously on arch, and ubuntu before that.
|
| i had no idea alpine ships setup-* scripts. there are so many of
| them and they are so good!
|
| postmarketos is alpine, so you can run the same distro on mobile
| and desktop.
|
| they support arm64, unlike arch.
|
| they ship ec2 amis, and rewrote cloudinit and made it way better.
|
| it feels like alpine minimalism just enables them to get a much
| more polished setup. things like solid setup scripts or cloud
| init scripts. they are good, because obviously they should be.
| rahen wrote:
| Try it on servers as well. If something doesn't work as it
| should, just run it in a CentOS/Ubuntu container.
|
| It usually works better than doing the opposite (CentOS/Ubuntu
| server running Alpine containers).
| nathants wrote:
| agree! that alpine ships ec2 amis is one of the reasons that
| i moved to alpine. have had no issues so far.
| usbfingers wrote:
| The cool part about using Alpine as a minimalist desktop is you
| can run the entire system from RAM - assuming you're running in
| diskless mode.
|
| I've showed people my Alpine desktop setup _on their own laptop_
| by booting from a USB. After booting, I unplug the USB, continue
| running the distro, and then restarting their machine as if
| nothing ever happened. Lots of cool factor driving motivation
| there, but I agree it's not as easy to use nor maintainable for
| most people.
|
| Also if your workstation dies, just toggle BIOS settings - if
| needed - and boot on another machine. No swapping / migrating
| drives required. Works amazingly if you're used to running on
| crap / dated hardware.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| The blockers are always going to be with musl
| MisterTea wrote:
| You can always chroot. Similar to how I run steam on my Void
| musl machine via flatpak.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Or docker or podman, if that's your preference.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Sometimes, but it Just Works often enough. Depends on your
| usecase.
| mro_name wrote:
| anyone seen it on an asus x205ta (32 bit BIOS, sigh)?
| clay-dreidels wrote:
| I've been running this setup for a year.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I've been using alpine with kde-plasma[1] for a little while
| now. Mostly works great!
|
| [1]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/KDE
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I use Alpine with XFCE on my laptop. Non-musl apps work ok in
| flatpak. Biggest annoyance is when I install a new Alpine
| package and it (for reasons I can't fathom) uninstalls my
| wifi packages so I have to grab an ethernet cable and
| reinstall everything. There's also a bug seg-faulting my X
| server when I scroll too much on my touchpad, but if I'm
| gentle it doesn't crash.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Biggest annoyance is when I install a new Alpine package
| and it (for reasons I can't fathom) uninstalls my wifi
| packages so I have to grab an ethernet cable and reinstall
| everything.
|
| What happens if you run with `apk add -i`? That's a weird
| bug.
| ithrow wrote:
| Why is alpine so popular for VMs/containers when popular runtimes
| like the JVM or nodejs don't officially support musl?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Because it makes really tiny images, and most stuff does work
| even if it's not officially supported.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| And if you need to use something non-musl compatible, you
| just make a container with a different base OS.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| My last job we actually switched away from it because of bugs
| and went back to Ubuntu for container base images
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Adding to what josephcsible said, not just tiny but also super
| simple. I use Alpine on all my routers/firewalls/VM's/physical
| servers for personal use. I've been very happy with it thus
| far. Simple upgrades. Easy to debug. All the packages I use
| appear to be compiled with decent hardening options. The LTS
| kernel is just a few days behind kernel.org.
|
| I've not tried to use it as a desktop. I alternate between Void
| and QubesOS for desktops.
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