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Not a bad choice. I'd say only Void or Slackware would be higher on my list if you're looking to avoid much of the cruft of today's distros.
Jan 22 · 8 weeks ago
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 22 at 18:34:
@zetamacs: those were definitely up on my list; Alpine seemed like the best instant gratification distro - small, reliable and secure. After my stint with FreeBSD I didn't feel like screwing around too much.
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 22 at 22:06:
Crap. I can see this is going to be death by papercuts. I think I will try Void Linux next, with glibc
🖥️ zetamacs · Jan 22 at 23:43:
@stack Yeah, good call. musl's great, but if "just work" is what you're after, that's not what you want.
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 22 at 23:48:
Hah, I am writing this from Void linux :)
Isn't Alpine meant for containers? I can appreciate the novelty of using it as a desktop OS, but I stopped distro-hopping for a reason. This sounds like more of a headache than it's worth.
I admire your tenacity!
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 25 at 18:33:
Yeah, Alpine was clearly the wrong choice -- I was just hoping I could get away with something very small and my requirements seem tiny...
But on a second thought, my requirements are not that small - a modern browser, tor, and it must work on a laptop... If only I could get off the mainweb...
At least you learned some things, and shared the results. So it's a net positive.
@Addison you'd be surprised at how well Alpine can work for people who run minimalist setups. See for instance https://drewdevault.com/2021/05/06/Praise-for-Alpine-Linux.html
That said I personally prefer NixOS both for configuration versioning and for easily rebuilding systems.
☕️ hellfire103 · Jan 30 at 11:01:
On FreeBSD, I just use DSBMC for automount.
Alpine Linux it is... — Well, I moved my main machine to Alpine Linux. I installed XFCE for now, to get a better sense of it. Alpine seems to not automount USB drives, which was something that annoyed me to no end with FreeBSD... Maybe there is a way to do it, as I have a stack of backup drives that I need to work on... I botched the XFCE install a little by screwing around with X a bit, so the login screen flashes for a second and disappears... It's still there and I can log in, but I can't...