Does anyone else use Alpine Linux not in any containers?
I use it on my laptop with Sway and it’s set up for my specific usage but it’s where I spend 95% of my time. When I need to do something that just works without any hassle or thinking, I switch to old reliable Linux Mint DE.
I don’t see Alpine in memes very often so I assume most people are sane and not trying to make a workstation out of Alpine.
I’m also considering using PostmarketOS as an alternative to LMDE but I have other projects I want to finish before I want to play around with different distributions.
I’ve always been drawn to minimalism. My happiest moments in life was backpacking with a 34 litre backpack for a number of years. The same concept can be applied to my Operating System. It’s minimal and up to me to build/create the experience I want.
The experience I wanted was to learn Linux at it’s core. There’s nothing wrong with GNU but it felt like a layer of abstraction that made learning Linux seem too distant for my personal liking.
I started using Alpine Linux as my OS for a self hosted server on a Raspberry Pi. I chose Alpine because from a security point of view it made sense. There was less surface area to target or exploit. Whatever I added was intentional, giving me a better understanding of the system I was building and using.
Eventually I decided that I want my desktop and server environment to be the same so that I am consistent in what I am learning. I didn’t want to switch between POSIX compliance/portability and GNU tools.
I don’t think it’s all that weird though. Alpine Linux provides a script that installs a variety of desktop environments. The wiki ([1][2]) also has information on how to set up all the extras like sound or graphics. Yes it’s more involved but it’s not impossible and can be rewarding.
I also found a fun (for me) hobby in writing POSIX portable scripts which is why I can spend so much time in Alpine. In the year I’ve been using Alpine, I’ve learned so much about Linux, how it works and how to work with it.