Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution 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. O ...

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 in ...

and

OpenRC OpenRC is a dependency-based init system for Unix-like computer operating systems. It was created by Roy Marples, a NetBSD developer who was also active in the Gentoo project. It became more broadly adopted as an init system outside of Gentoo f ...

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 by ...

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 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. Kernel ...

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. 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 term ...

providing quick boot-up times, on

virtual machines In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hard ...

as well as on real hardware in

embedded devices An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' as ...

, 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 and Samba. 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 no ...

as its C standard library 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 In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for Software distribution, distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was ...

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 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. 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