Subject: Thinking about using Alpine edge on my desktop, how stable is it?

From: Camelia Lavender <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 02:51:35 +0200

Hello everyone,

First of all, I want to thank all the people who make Alpine possible, 
it is a really awesome distribution! Much love to you <3

I've been using Alpine Linux on my VPS since several months and I am 
loving it so much that I'm considering switching to it on my desktop as 
well. I am thinking about using the rolling release (edge) for my 
desktop, and I was wondering whether some people in here in have been 
running it for some time.

More specifically, my questions are the following:

- 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?

Of course, I know that this question doesn't give any guarantee and I 
also understand that by enabling the testing repository my system will 
be more prone to errors. I guess I just want to hear from people who 
have more experience with Alpine than I currently do.
-- 
Sincerely,

Camelia Lavender (she/they)
PGP: 0xDBCC70EFBC360E97

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 09:22:35 +0200 (GMT+02:00)

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.

Aug 4, 2025, 06:23 by [email-masked]:

> Hello everyone,
>
> First of all, I want to thank all the people who make Alpine possible, it is a really awesome distribution! Much love to you <3
>
> I've been using Alpine Linux on my VPS since several months and I am loving it so much that I'm considering switching to it on my desktop as well. I am thinking about using the rolling release (edge) for my desktop, and I was wondering whether some people in here in have been running it for some time.
>
> - 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?
> Of course, I know that this question doesn't give any guarantee and I also understand that by enabling the testing repository my system will be more prone to errors. I guess I just want to hear from people who have more experience with Alpine than I currently do.
> -- 
> Sincerely,
>

---

From: Unicorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 09:46:04 +0200 (GMT+02:00)

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?

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

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From: Sertonix <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 07:59:51 +0000

I came from Arch to Alpine (edge) on my desktop and consider them similar. Alpine has a bit less preconfigured and unfortunatly a bit less documentation. There is a lot of common desktop software available but depending on your needs you might need to package some software yourselfs.

I can't speak about breakages too much since I am involved in development but generally there are sometimes temporary upgrade failures due to packages that need to be rebuild. If the issue percists for too long you can report it somewhere. The testing repository doesn't cause any additional breakage in my experience. In that repo it's probably best to verify if the version of the software is a recent one. You may want to tag the repository to avoid accidentally installing packages from testing.

---

From: Ralf Mardorf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:56:48 +0200

On Mon, 2025-08-04 at 07:59 +0000, Sertonix wrote:
> I came from Arch to Alpine (edge) on my desktop and consider them
> similar.

Hi,

I use Arch Linux for my daily desktop PC tasks and have also installed
Alpine on this Linux-multi-boot desktop PC. The only thing Alpine and
Arch have in common is that they are both user-centric rather than user-
friendly. Let's take BusyBox, "The Swiss Army knife of Embedded Linux",
as an example. For good reason, you don't usually use a Swiss Army knife
when eating at a restaurant or at home at the kitchen table.

The rolling release approach is also completely different in Arch than
in Alpine, which must also be taken into account with regard to the OP's
question. A computer that needs to be stable for productive work, but is
only intended for a computer geek and not for inexperienced employees,
can use Arch, otherwise, you would even have to use an LTS major distro.
However, Alpine edge cannot even be compared to the rolling release
approach of Arch. There are various reasons for this, but apart from the
kind of quality management, something as simple as the use of glibc and
systemd makes direct appling of the software from upstream way easier,
so potentially safer and more stable.

Regards,
Ralf

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From: "fossdd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:08:46 +0200

> 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 Fed…

This is not true. Alpine Linux is a general-purpose distro. Of course
for many (maybe most) developers the focus is in headless environments
(e.g. containers and servers), but, for example, I, do care and am
permanently involved in Alpine desktops (in the scope as a
postmarketOS developer, but for Alpine aswell).

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 10:06:17 +0100

Alpine has all the packages required for a desktop.

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From: Ralf Mardorf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:26:31 +0200

> Alpine has all the packages required for a desktop.

Question: Can Lionel Messi work as a ballet dancer?
Answer: Lionel Messi is athletic and has all limbs.

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From: "fossdd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:41:36 +0200

> Answer: Lionel Messi is athletic and has all limbs.

Alpine Linux works flawlessly as a desktop, maybe given some
configuraiton.  If it doesn't work for you, please open a issue instead
of writing useless comments.

---

From: Ralf Mardorf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:55:53 +0200

Hi,

please read the original question and don't accuse me of something I
didn't write.

Who said that Alpine wouldn't work for me? I never said that.

I explained why Alpine, especially when using unstable repositories, is
not a generally good desktop distro, not even for geeks.

You answered a question that wasn't even asked, which is quite
remarkable.

   The OP's question: Thinking about using Alpine edge on my desktop,
   how stable is it?
   Your answer: Alpine has all the packages required for a desktop.

Incidentally, I can also eat a meal with a Swiss Army knife, but I'll
eat my lunch with a knife and fork.

Regards,
Ralf

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From: Ralf Mardorf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 12:22:24 +0200

>    Your answer: Alpine has all the packages required for a desktop.

Correction it wasn't you. It was a reply from Ian Smith.

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From: Faustin Lammler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 11:33:15 +0200

Hi!
I don't agree with Camelia, I am using it on a daily basis on desktop
and laptop for more than 2 years, and I am very happy with it.

I use the stable version (currently 3.22) and install packages from edge
and testing only if they are not available in the stable version. For
proprietary software (zoom, slack etc.), flatpak is working pretty well.

For software not available in Alpine nor in Flatpak or for testing
purposes, I use a libvirt debian VM.

My move from Debian was motivated by SystemD (and apk which is fabulous)
and my move to Alpine Linux by
https://drewdevault.com/2023/07/25/Alpine-does-not-make-news.html

Cheers!

[email-masked],

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From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 12:15:41 +0100

It is the ML setup that is wrong, it defaults to replying to a random
user.  I just had to delet @spoon from teh cc otherwise it would have
been even worse!

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From: Prabu Anand Kalivaradhan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 16:52:01 +0530

Since you have already used Alpine in a VPS, i believe you should be
quite familiar with core ideas behind Alpine Linux.

With that in mind, testing repository is needed only if the package
needed by you is not available in community/main. Since you're
planning to use "edge" software version conflicts are also a
non-issue. Packages in testing does not usually cause extra downtime.
Alpine edge is recommended, if you plan to develop/contribute to
Alpine Linux.

For new desktop users  go with stable release initially. Upgrading to
Edge is one command away. With stable release, using "Testing"
repository requires extra care.

I have been using Alpine Linux stable release as a desktop OS for an
year without any issues and i used Arch earlier.  Do note that
proprietary binary-only hardware driver will remain a blocker, if you
have one.

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From: revsuine <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:04:20 +0100

On Mon, 2025-08-04 at 09:22 +0200, [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> 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.

It really depends on what you do on your desktop. Fwiw I've found Alpine has
better availability of desktop user software in its repos than most distros,
rivalled only by Arch if you use the AUR alongside official repos. I've also had
no problem going from the base system that you get after a fresh Alpine install
to a working graphical environment with basic user software (and from there you
can customise and make more elaborate to your heart's delight).

I've not tried, but as I understand it musl is not great for video games (or at
least the modern proprietary ones, maybe the more fossy ones work better?), so
it's maybe not for people who want to play games on their PC. But I'm sure it's
fine if e.g. your main desktop activity is development, or web browsing, or
general productivity.

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From: Unicorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 15:18:46 +0200 (GMT+02:00)

> it's maybe not for people who want to play games on their PC.

Just to add to this, Flatpak is still a good option for compatibility 
with proprietary glibc-only games on Alpine, for example using Lutris or 
Steam from Flathub. I've also had success running games in Incus (lxc) 
containers, though that's not as easy to set up.

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From: "fossdd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 15:38:10 +0200

> containers, though that's not as easy to set up.

Also distrobox is a very easy way to setup a environment with another
distro which uses glibc, since makes sure the home directory is shared
etc.