Alpine Linux

Developer	Alpine Linux development team
OS family	Linux (Unix-like)
Working state	Active
Source model	Open source
Initial release	August 2005; 19 years ago (2005-08)[1]
Latest release	3.21.3[2] / 13 February 2025; 33 days ago (13 February 2025)
Repository	gitlab.alpinelinux.org
Marketing target	General-purpose. Security, embedded systems and other resource-constrained systems, such as containers.[3]
Available in	Multilingual
Package manager	apk[4]
Platforms	x86 x86-64 ARMhf ARMv7 AArch64 ppc64le s390x LoongArch riscv64
Kernel type	Monolithic (Linux)
Userland	BusyBox
Default user interface	Ash
Official website	alpinelinux.org

Alpine Linux is aLinux distribution designed to be small, simple, and secure.^[3] It usesmusl,BusyBox, andOpenRC instead of the more commonly usedglibc,GNU Core Utilities, andsystemd.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} This makes Alpine one of few Linux distributions not to be based on the GNU Core Utilities or glibc.^[10]

For security, Alpine compiles alluser-space binaries asposition-independent executables withstack-smashing protection.^[11]

Because of its small size and rapid startup, it is commonly used incontainers providing quick boot-up times,^[12][13] onvirtual machines as well as on real hardware inembedded devices, such asrouters,servers andNAS.^{[citation needed]}

Originally, Alpine Linux began as an embedded-first distribution for devices such aswireless routers, based onGentoo Linux,^[14] inspired byGNAP and the Bering-uClibc branch of theLEAF Project.^[1] Founder Natanael Copa has said that the name was chosen as abackronym for "A Linux-Powered Network Engine" or some such similar phrase, but that the exact phrase has since been forgotten.^[15]

Alpine'spackage management system, the Alpine Package Keeper (apk),^[a][4] was originally a collection ofshell scripts^[16] but was later rewritten inC.^[17] The aim of this package manager is to achieve a high install and update speed, which it does by writing new data directly in-place into the operating system'sfile system, rather than employingcaching orcompression.^[15]

In 2014, Alpine Linux switched fromuClibc tomusl as itsC standard library.^[18]

APaX hardened kernel was included in the default distribution to aid in reducing the impact of exploits and vulnerabilities,^[19] but Alpine's maintainers chose to discontinue this support due to the PaX patch no longer being made publicly available.^[20] Alpine still uses ahardened toolchain and position-independent executables to minimize the potential forstack-based attacks,^[15] but is now based on the standard long term stable distribution of the Linux kernel.

Alpine's primary feature is its small size, which enables it to start quickly and run in environments very low in memory and storage, such ascontainers orembedded devices.

Alpine Linux can optionally be installed as arun-from-RAM operating system. 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 running in this mode will only load a few key packages, but a tool calledLBU (Alpine Local Backup)^[21] is made available that allow changes in this boot configuration to be written to a special file called an APK overlay file (usually shortened toapkovl), atar.gz file that by default stores a copy of all files in /etc that have been changed from the default configuration, with the option to track more directories as needed.

Alpine offers a number of preinstalled configuration scripts which guide the user through initial configuration of the system for common computing tasks.^[22] In addition, Alpine also offers awebserver-based tool known as the Alpine Configuration Framework, which allows users less familiar with Alpine or the command line to configure the operating system in a way similar to that allowed byDebian'sdebconf utility. Alpine's configuration scripts are written entirely as UNIXshell scripts, which call a smallISO image parsing utility written in C and distributed in Alpine. The Alpine Configuration Framework is scripted inLua.^[23]

Due to its robustness and compactness, Alpine Linux is tightly integrated with popular developer and system administrator environments and toolsets.

• Microsoft Store offers a deployment-ready version of Alpine WSL^[24] forWSL2
• Docker offers official images of Alpine Linux^[25]
• Microsoft PowerShell provides an Alpine Linux specific build^[26]

postmarketOS, a Linux distribution formobile devices, is based on Alpine Linux.^[27]

• Official website

• Independent Linux distributions
• Light-weight Linux distributions
• Linux distributions
• Linux distributions without systemd
• X86-64 Linux distributions

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