this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Fair point, Alpine offers even more customizability by having more init systems, using openrc and busybox instead of GNU core utils. It has a way better built in installer and is also pretty lightweight.
However it was involved in some controversies where the dev team showed themselves biased and it's also quite inconvenient to use if you have been using GNU tools for a while.
Both distros are neat but I like void cuz its green and alpine is cyan
This is meaningless without specifying what bias.
They won't package Hyprland and some niche browsers. Not a big deal since you can easily get build templates from the community, but a gripe for some.
tbf, iirc, Void also doesn't package hyprland for reasons that tend to concern reactionaries.
Any articles about this controversy? Just curious.
Gigachad. /srs
I too would like to know more about this controversies. Some quick web search found me some articles about xlibre rejection as well as preparation for systemd compatibility, none of which should be a big deal.
As for myself, I avoid running Alpine for a full-featured desktop system simply for the fact they're designed for embedded systems.
I have in fact tried setting it up for desktop use. What made me end up abandoning it was that I ended up having to get rid of the stuff that make the distro special (i.e. busybox and musl) since even the lightest distro requires udev and all.
To be clear, they're not switching to systemd; they're just reportedly (I can't find primary sources on this, only secondary) working on compatibility with programs that expect systemd to be there.
I mean there are systemd haters questioning anyone's sanity who is daring enough to do that...
AFAIK, they're not switching to systemd in the first place, at least for its base system. PostmarketOS is tho, and I can see why they'd want to facilitate that.
Why? And what was the point about them rejecting XLibre?
Xlibre is an explicitly right-wing projevf developed by alt-right developers. They have been rejected by other distros as well on those grounds in favor of Wayback, a non-right wing alternative.
First of all, it wasn't rejected. Several noticeable distros included it to their repos or began testing. And the reason Void Linux yet hasn't, is that the team isn't sure about Xlibre's longevity.
I see no reason in cancelling XLibre due to developer's political views. It's free and open source, that's it. Enrico Weigelt gets nothing for working on it. Furthermore, it is good that he's making XLibre. He's doing something safe and useful. He could've become a political bloger or activist and influence minds instead of coding. Now ask yourself, if this would be better than maintaining an obscure fork of a deprecated piece of software, which is hardly going to ever be adopted in security-sensitive environments (because they are on distros with Wayland already).
The systemd units are easier to create and maintain compared to the init scripts. The systemd itself can also be used as a one stop solution for cron, hostname, ntp client, dns resolver, tmpfile manager, even bootloader, and many more.
Don't get me wrong, I'd use OpenRC where I can, but I totally see why systemd is popular.
As for the XLibre, I've never used it myself since I'd be upgrading to Wayland instead. My legacy systems remain on X11. I've read it's quige buggy tho. At the same time, there are a lot of fanatics who are making this a big deal out of proportion.
I use Alpine as my desktop daily driver. The
setup-desktop[link] andsetup-devd[link] scripts that come with Alpine are convenient for setting up a desktop environment.There still is some extra work to get things working but the wiki has a good tutorial page which is a good start for setting up a desktop environment on Alpine.
I do think Alpine is quite flexible beyond embedded systems. That's a lot of effort to include desktop environments in their OS or even in major version release notes.
While I'm aware that it's completely feasible and even practical to setup desktop on alpine, what drove me away was the fact we'd be ditching musl & busybox for more full-featured solutions anyway.
I often see claims that Alpine linux is just for embedded systems. I wanted to highlight to other people that there is far more to Alpine than embedded systems or being used for containers.
It's mininal like void but still very flexible and capable if people are willing to work with Musl, BusyBox or OpenRC. It's a nice option for anyone who has issues with SystemD or may want to depend less on GNU tools.
Like any distribution, it doesn't fill everyone's wants or needs but it seems to have grown more than serving just embedded systems.
I agree : I ran Void with joy for 2 years, very stable and usable, makes you learn how the init/daemon system works in a very sensitive and easy way (runit).
However, if you try to find GNU packages or Gpl packages, it just does not exist (Exim, Mailutils, and some others).
So dumped it and back to Devuan/Debian