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,
BusyBox and
OpenRC instead of the more commonly used
glibc,
GNU Core Utilities 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 manager ...
respectively.
[Security-Oriented Alpine Linux 3.7 Has UEFI Support, GRUB Support in Installer](_blank)
''Softpedia News''[10 Most Secure Linux Distros For Complete Privacy & Anonymity , 2017 Edition](_blank)
''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.
Kern ...
binaries as
position-independent executables 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 providing quick boot-up times,
on
virtual machines as well as on real hardware in
embedded devices, such as
routers,
servers and
NAS.
History
Originally, Alpine Linux began as a fork of the
LEAF Project.
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 fitting t ...
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. Havin ...
. They also added security features and a newer kernel.
Alpine's
package management system, apk-tools, was originally a collection of shell scripts but was later rewritten in
C.
As of 04
June 2014, Alpine Linux switched from
uClibc to
musl 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 ยง7'' Starting from the original ANSI C standard, it wa ...
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 standard.
Alpine has reliably had excellent support of
Xen
Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was
originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory an ...
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 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