Alpine Linux is designed for power users, with security, simplicity and resource efficiency in mind.
Alpine is the OS (Operating System), that runs on your machine. Programs such as a web browser run on the OS, and web pages like “wiki.alpinelinux.org” are handled by the web browser.
Keep in mind that today due to the great popularity of Docker, Alpine Linux is one of the most deployed operating systems currently in use, because within every other operating system that uses docker, the docker image it uses is almost always Alpine Linux.
Alpine Linux is different from most other Linux distros in a few ways:
- it is built around musl libc, not glibc, which means there might be incompatibilites with some packages
- its main utilities (coreutils) are derived from busybox and suckless, but GNU coreutils can be installed
- it uses a hardened Linux kernel by default, but offers an optional vanilla original kernel for desktop users
- it compiles all userspace binaries as position-independent executables with stack-smashing protection
In next sections you will find general information necessary to start in the Alpine powered world for a new user.
Index
| Link | Description |
| FAQ | Some Frequently Asked Questions that might be useful to you |
| Alpine newbie installation | Those writings are more focused on “Follow these steps blindly” for beginners, those pages are specific general cases, by example on virtual-box ones. |
| Post installation | Some post installation steps you might want to take |
| Desktop environments and Window managers | As a minimal distribution, Alpine follows the rule of “upstream provided”, this means that Alpine doesn’t ship with any graphical environments neither specific integrated configurations for. So means, but, you can installed some Desktops and Window Managers but must configured by yourself. |
| Alpine newbie developer | Alpine development stack: Alpine Linux is the most used Linux for deploying software, making it a good choice if you are a developer. |
Installation
The Alpine newbie installation wiki page is focused on the idea to cover popular quick cases such as ARM, i386 and AMD64 that only offer the ready-to-use installation, that is, cases where only alpine will be the OS to install, in order to understand it faster, once understood, you can play and deep more granular over your preferred install.
For more granular, advanced or more specific cases you will have to read the official installation wiki page at Installation. Its more recommended you first use an alpine virtual-box install and understand the system before try more deep install process, that is why we offered in newbie category the Alpine newbie installation wiki pages!
Post install and Software Packages
See: Post installation
The programs, the software installed to Alpine comes from two places: repositories (those managed by Alpine) and original upstream sources (those co
