Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 09:46:04 +0200 (GMT+02:00)
From: Unicorn <unicorn@regrow.earth>
To: spoon@keemail.me
Cc: Camelia Lavender <cam@camelia.dev>, ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Message-ID: <0b875790-7585-406d-8c5e-9492734982e0@regrow.earth>
In-Reply-To: <OWnxUBI--F-9@keemail.me>
References: <5297f63e-53ba-4591-837b-aac9436cb4d9@camelia.dev> <OWnxUBI--F-9@keemail.me>
Subject: Re: Thinking about using Alpine edge on my desktop, how stable is
 it?
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Hi!

>> - In your experience, with proper maintenance (regular system 
>> upgrades, updating configuration files, etc.), did Alpine edge 
>> (*without* the testing repository enabled) often break in the past?
>> - Same question but *with* the testing repository enabled?

I've been running Alpine Edge as my everyday OS on a laptop for a few 
years without any bad breakage (also after loving it on a VPS ;) ). From 
what I remember, there was a bootloader (grub) related issue once, which 
I was not affected by due to using a different bootloader, as well as a 
few dependency conflict issues, only one of which affected me but didn't 
cause any major issues.

I have used a couple of packages pinned from testing in all that time so 
I can't say how much the experience without it differs. I have not had to 
rescue my system with a USB for anything that I didn't personally 
misconfigure :)


> Alpine is not a desktop distro. It's only practical use is in 
> containers and servers. You are gonna have a hard time doing anything 
> productive if you use it for desktop. Better stick to Arch or Fedora 
> for desktop.

For my own use I disagree, Alpine with sway as a window manager has been 
great for me and have no plans of changing - in the end, you will have to 
see for yourself whether it fulfills your needs and isn't too 
inconvenient because it is a very manual setup process. I personally like 
it but it is not a finished out of the box experience like many other 
distros.

Worth noting also is that Alpine is musl-libc based, meaning that random 
downloaded binaries, as well as AppImage applications likely won't work. 
Flatpak works great but this difference is something to be aware of, it 
depends a lot on what software you need.

Best,
Edin