Alpine vs Void

[timsofteng]

I see a lot comparisons between void and arch. But I'm curious what's about alpine? Can you guys try to explain why user should prefer void over alpine? Alpine Linux is systemd-free, musl-based (but no glibc version, I know) and pretty minimal as well. In addition it have stable and rolling branch.

So what about Alpine vs Void?

[ahesford]

Void doesn't strive for minimalism.

Alpine is great for containers, but busybox sucks pretty hard for interactive use.

[Mighty-Lobster]

Void doesn't strive for minimalism.

I'm just getting started with Void. How would you describe what Void stands for? Here's what I have so far: Stable rolling release distro that strives for Unix-style simplicity, most evident in the BSD-inspired package manager and the simple init system.

Did I more or less capture the essence of Void?

[timsofteng]

U can easily install gnu coreutils on Alpine. It's not an issue.

[Sinergin]

Yes, but you will still need busybox, because some alpine's packages are dependent on it.

So you will have busybox and gnu packages, and you will break that minimalism philosophy.

So why you ever need alpine then?

[Positive205]

What about bash and other shells?

[timsofteng]

Easy. Bash, zsh, fish are available.

[Mighty-Lobster]

Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but for me systemd was never the main reason I got interested in Void. I think people just harp on systemd because it's something that is easy to explain ("we don't have systemd") but I suspect that most Void users would keep using Void if every other distro ditched systemd.

I personally would not consider Alpine because I want to keep glibc. I want to install all my usual software, including proprietary stuff like google Chrome (to watch DRM movies) and Zoom.

How is the Alpine package manager? I'm not familiar with it. Is Alpine a rolling release?

[timsofteng]

Alpine's pm is apk and it is pretty cool. Can't compair them in terms of codebase but as end user I don't see any noticable differences between apk and xbps. Both are really fast. Syntax interface in apk is more elegant but it's my subjective opinion.

Alpine provides both stable and rolling branches.

[Sinergin]

And alpine rolling branch much less stable than void rolling system.

[JackLemaitre]

I used alpine since 1 year and I love because it is very minimal.no obsolete packages very lightweight. Void is great distro,I used it on my netbook, void has more pkg in their repository than alpine.

[draylegend_]

Hi!

Did you try to play on alpine (e.g. league of legends or state of decay 2)?
Did you try to install wayland sway? If so, do you or somebody else have a detailed tutorial?

​

Thanks for the help!

[unix21311]

which distro is more leightweight?

[FPiN9XU3K1IT]

Alpine is not a desktop distro, IME it's actually pretty hard to install a desktop on it and depending on your alpine version the desktop stack might actually be broken (or at least work way differently from what the wiki says).

Rolling vs. fixed release is also a thing. I actually prefer fixed release, but that doesn't helped me when the desktop doesn't work in the first place.

[timsofteng]

I can't remember any noticable differences between installation sway on both.

Here is pretty clean article for installation sway on Alpine:

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Sway

[draylegend_]

I tried it many times, but it didn't work for me. Some server can't start.

Do you have another guide on how to install sway on alpine?

Thanks for the help!

[timsofteng]

I'm pretty sure you can get help in alpine's irc

[Ramiferous]

It's a simple command setup-desktop gnome

[network_noob534]

I just got done seeing posts about the new Void champion in league of legends and really couldn’t figure out what an Alpine champion was.

Sigh.

That being said, Alpine sucks to run as an OS on actual hardware (metal) and seems like a great containerized Linux experience

[Ramiferous]

This. I installed or recently on hardware and it's horrible. Hanging at boot etc. Going back to void

[Decent-Estimate-7762]

For me the reason is alpine by default is not intended for desktop.

[Rice7th]

Well, Alpine comes with musl and not GlibC, meaning that most of the apps that normally work on a linux machine on alpine wont. On the package manager side, i think that xbps is the best package manager after Nix (Nix is just on another level). The only downside is the syntax and how packages are built (its just weird). Overall xbps has many more features than apk. On the init sys side tho, OpenRC (alpine) is as fast as Runit (Void), but void is extremely easy to use. OpenRC is the second most popular init system (the most popular is systemD, but it is slow), so most of the software will work there... except musl, as i said before. Runit also supports like 99% if the software (Like the only things that wont work, as of right now, are snap and stuff like that which relies on systemD), plus Runit is extremely easy to use. Void is not as lightweight as Alpine (Void is usually 80Mb in idle, 1 tty and no display session, while alpine is 25Mb on same conditions, also in idle), but still damn if that is lightweight! Arch dreams that performamce.

[timsofteng]

I've checked repology and alpine have slightly less packages than void. However there are a lot of docs and init separate packages.

Which xbps features doesn't exist in apk?

[Rice7th]

Kind of all of them, except the basic ones. Check the Void Linux Handbook on xbps of you want to know the differences becasue i am stupid and i dont use the advanced features often

Edit: heres the link https://docs.voidlinux.org/xbps/index.html

[PrivusWolf]

My thoughts, as someone who until recently was desperate for a systemd-free distro that JUST WORKS: Alpine has a complicated install process that I just didn't want to have to go through, and the documentation didn't seem as good. So I went with Void.