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i don't really get the point of replacing apt. it's not usually used that often to require a serious upgrade to performance, even if it's somewhat slower than some competition
systemd - the same. it's not that much larger or heavier than the other options. it's not the bottleneck of the system performance by very far
musl - also a moot point. it's regarded as "less resource demanding, but slower" than glibc, and pretty much everything is made based on glibc, so you're likely to get more compatibility issues by using musl, which may not be compatible in some cases. -
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@iiii about musl vs glibc argument. I believe you just googled that and repeated the first thing you read there. I’ve heard that point too, that glibc is faster than musl. Have you tried a musl-based desktop distro yourself? Because I did, and on my machine, alpine is faster than ubuntu.
I have 16 threads, 16 gigs of ram and an RTX 3070. Ubuntu had tiny little freezes sometimes. Alpine though? None. -
@kiki i know this anti-systemd movement in general, but in most cases i do not agree with the mentioned issues being actual issues and not PEBCAK
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@kiki the point about glibc and musl is not "the first thing". This general comparison is mentioned quite often. It might be a bit outdated maybe, but still there aren't really a lot of legitimate reasons to replace one with another, unless you have a rare specific case where it does matter.
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@iiii I would argue the opposite: a smaller tool is always better, unless you have a rare specific case that requires a larger tool. This goes for doas, glibc and systemd.
Why use sudo when smaller doas works for me? Why use glibc when smaller musl works for me? Why use systemd over openrc when openrc works just fine?
So far, I don't have any justification for a bigger, more bloated distro. I can code/browse web/listen to music just fine on Alpine with Gnome. That's about all I need.
I have dualboot with windows 11 for games. Running modern games on desktop linux is an exercise in frustration.
I like fast linux. Alpine is fast linux. -
@Tounai turns out it isn't!
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@kiki Linux is a disaster, lol. Systemd is only a chunk of shit of the whole big shit
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@IHateFrameworks if you want to escape surveillance capitalism, you have several options: linux, bsd, haiku os. bsd is harder than linux. haiku is not ready yet. so yeah, linux it is. I prefer to know that 100% of tools I use are fully open source. if I had more spare cash, I would've bought a computer with open source firmware too, but right now that's not an option. So yeah, my setup is like 99.8% open source
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@kiki The fuck u talking about gal... surveillance capitalism? lmao, even if it's on open source (and that grants nothing unless you take the whole source, examine it yourself and compile it by yourself) your freedom of privacy ends as soon as the first tcp packet leaves your computer (and vice-versa).
No amount of open source free anarchy11!!11111!! OS or firmware is going to give you any degree of freedom. -
@IHateFrameworks you’re mixing up surveillance capitalism and targeted cyberattacks by the govt.
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@IHateFrameworks nah. Linux is far from disaster. A bit chaotic in some aspects - sure.
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@kiki 90% of the surveillance happen in your bowser. Don’t install a bowser and you should be fine.
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@Tounai it doesn't happen in _my_ browser though.
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@kiki in practice I've found that systemd brings more than it hurts. It does its job well and I mostly don't care about the wars around it.
Posting a list of past issues just sad shaming. You can do the same with every component it replaces. The responses to issues are what matters bar out of proportion stability relative to the complexity. Now here is where Lennard did drop the ball a few times. I still like to think that is also caused by all the unjustified hate.
As for apt, while it works it's one of my least favourite package managers/ecosystem. -
@kiki @iiii I've used alpine, and did run into a few of those issues with musl. Once you know what the cryptic errors mean you get the compatibility sorted it's no longer an issue. A lot of programs don't need glibc specific stuff and I still have hope that Alpine contributes to that.
I've used Alpine mostly in containerised setups as this is where the lightness really shines. It's a great distro but a bit too striped back for my daily driver.
If you want the most secure; immutable stuff like NixOS might be something to look into. -
@hjk101 are those "past issues" really past?
Daily driving alpine linux on my laptop. Excellent distro:
- Probably the most secure linux in the world, with very low attack surface and a lot of money being spent to keep it secure — alpine is the most popular linux for docker containers, and everyone uses docker nowadays
- no systemd (but openrc, way lighter)
- no apt (but apk, the fastest deps manager for linux bar none)
- no glibc (but musl, way lighter)
- no sudo (but doas, lighter)
- wayland and gnome work out of the box
- flatpak for heavy ubuntu-centric apps like some browsers. Librewolf, Firefox and Chromium don't require flatpak, they're in the main index
- I couldn't figure out secure boot in ubuntu. I read all the manuals, to no avail. GPT-4.5 couldn't figure it out either. It was a deal-breaker for me — I need secure boot. In alpine, I spent one morning (today) and got up and running relatively easily. It just works
- everything is stupid fast
- usually, in minimal distros, you expect the desktop part to work, but dev & serious parts to be a PITA. In alpine, both work flawlessly bc it's a server-oriented distro
Alpine ftw!
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