Alpine Linux is a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

designed to be small, simple and secure. Alpine Linux uses

musl musl is a C standard library intended for operating systems based on the Linux kernel, released under the MIT License. It was developed by Rich Felker with the goal to write a clean, efficient and standards-conformant libc implementation. ...

BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with inte ...

and OpenRC instead of the more commonly used

glibc The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++ (and, indirectly, other programming languages). It was started in the 1980s ...

GNU Core Utilities The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing implementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems. In September 2002, the ''GNU coreutils'' were ...

and

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. Its main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions; Its primary component is a "system and service manag ...

respectively.Security-Oriented Alpine Linux 3.7 Has UEFI Support, GRUB Support in Installer
''Softpedia News''10 Most Secure Linux Distros For Complete Privacy & Anonymity , 2017 Edition
''FossBytes'' For security, Alpine compiles all

user-space A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kerne ...

binaries as

position-independent executable In computing, position-independent code (PIC) or position-independent executable (PIE) is a body of machine code that, being placed somewhere in the primary memory, executes properly regardless of its absolute address. PIC is commonly used for ...

s with

stack-smashing protection Buffer overflow protection is any of various techniques used during software development to enhance the security of executable programs by detecting buffer overflows on stack-allocated variables, and preventing them from causing program misbehavior ...

. Because of its small size and rapid startup, it is commonly used in

containers A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The ter ...

providing quick boot-up times, on virtual machines as well as on real hardware in embedded devices, such as routers, servers and

NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ...

History

Originally, Alpine Linux began as a fork of the

LEAF Project The LEAF (Linux Embedded Appliance Framework) Project is a collection of Linux distributions that began as a fork from the Linux Router Project (LRP) "linux-on-a-floppy" distribution. Most users of these distributions are primarily interested in ...

. The members of LEAF wanted to continue making a Linux distribution that could fit on a single floppy disk, whereas the Alpine Linux wished to include some more heavyweight packages:

Squid True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fittin ...

and

Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havi ...

. They also added security features and a newer kernel. Alpine's

package management A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

system, apk-tools, was originally a collection of shell scripts but was later rewritten in C. As of 04

June June is the sixth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the second of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the third of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. June contains the summer solstice in ...

2014, Alpine Linux switched from

uClibc __NOTOC__ In computing, uClibc (sometimes written µClibc) is a small C standard library intended for Linux kernel-based operating systems for embedded systems and mobile devices. uClibc was written to support μClinux, a version of Linux n ...

as its

C standard library The C standard library or libc is the standard library for the C programming language, as specified in the ISO C standard. ISO/IEC (2018). '' ISO/IEC 9899:2018(E): Programming Languages - C §7'' Starting from the original ANSI C standard, it was ...

A hardened kernel was included in the default distribution for up to and including Alpine 3.7, which aided in reducing the impact of exploits and vulnerabilities.

Features

Alpine Linux can be installed as a run-from-RAM operating system. The ''LBU'' (Alpine Local Backup) tool optionally allows all configuration files to be backed up to an APK overlay file (usually shortened to ''apkovl''), a tar.gz file that by default stores a copy of all changed files in /etc (with the option to add more directories). This allows Alpine to work reliably in demanding embedded environments or to (temporarily) survive partial disk failures as sometimes experienced in public cloud environments. By default, Alpine includes patches that allow using efficient meshed VPNs using the

DMVPN Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) is a dynamic tunneling form of a virtual private network (VPN) supported on Cisco IOS-based routers, and Huawei AR G3 routers, and on Unix-like operating systems. Benefits DMVPN provides the ca ...

standard. Alpine has reliably had excellent support of Xen hypervisors in up-to-date versions, which avoids issues as experienced with Enterprise Distributions. (The standard Linux hypervisor KVM, is also available.) Alpine Configuration Framework (ACF): While optional, ACF is an application for configuring an Alpine Linux machine, with goals similar to Debian's

debconf is a software utility for performing system-wide configuration tasks on Unix-like operating systems. It is developed for the Debian Linux distribution, and is closely integrated with Debian's package management system, dpkg. When packages are ...

. It is a standard framework based on simple Lua scripts.

Derivatives

Mobile Linux distribution

postmarketOS postmarketOS (abbreviated as pmOS) is an operating system primarily for smartphones, based on the Alpine Linux distribution. postmarketOS was launched on 26 May 2017 with the source code available on GitHub before migrating to GitLab in 2018. I ...

is based on Alpine Linux.

References

External links

* {{Linux package management systems Independent Linux distributions Light-weight Linux distributions Linux distributions Linux distributions without systemd X86-64 Linux distributions