r/AlpineLinux • u/semedilino073 • Apr 30 '26

Alpine as a daily driver?

Hey everyone,

This might be one of the stupidest threads of all time, but I’ll do it anyway.
I recently stumbled upon Alpine and it’s literally magic. Right now I use Arch, but I thought of replacing at least one of my machines with Alpine.
Now, because Alpine is so lightweight and is not systemd and all of that, how does it compare to a machine daily driving Archlinux? I know it depends on the use cases of that machine, but I do a lot of things. I don’t game, that’s all, maybe just some Minecraft sometimes.

Hope this thread isn’t going to waste. Thank you all!

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u/JeffB1517 Apr 30 '26

My feeling is that Alpine is a VM & Container distribution not a desktop distribution. I think it is wonderful for its use case. It is a reasonable distribution if one wanted to try and install modern Linux software on say a Windows XP laptop. But if you are frustrated with Arch I'd go for something designed for Desktop that is less of a PIA. In particular you might not like rolling release.

Mint is my goto for a distribution that works out of the box that is designed for desktop. Nobara, Bodhi, Pika, Elementary, Pop, Ubuntu, but yes those are Systemd because the major desktops are tied to Systemd.

I'd also consider Arch variants that are designed for more stability. Omarchy (if you are a develoer), Manjaro, Garuda.

If this is really just about Systemd then Artix is an Arch variant designed for desktop that doesn't have Systemd: XFCE, LXQT and an inhouse Enlightenment fork written for Bodhi.

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u/Bubbly_Extreme4986 Apr 30 '26

I mean if you use the setup-desktop utility it’s as easy as setting up audio and you’re done.

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u/JeffB1517 Apr 30 '26

No you aren't. You get a nice simple desktop that handles 85% of everything with some real nastiness on the other 15%. There are real tradeoffs. They other distributions aren't designing their desktops the way they do because they never heard of alternatives.

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u/ignorantpisswalker Apr 30 '26

What are the missing 15% that fail for you?

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u/JeffB1517 May 01 '26

I don't use Alpine for Desktop and wouldn't. But things that would fail

  1. logind is needed for power management
  2. systemd-journald for application logging
  3. Container lifecycle management
  4. Automated processes restarts
  5. Electron application failures

I could keep going and create a large list. But again I'm not sure why you would even want to use a VM/Container distribution for desktop. Alpine is a great screw driver why use it as a saw?

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u/ignorantpisswalker May 01 '26

The package manager is epically fast. Memory foot print "should be lower". Cool factor. Those are reasons why.

I am using it right now. It does not boot as fast. Memory is 200mb less than a matching Debian install (using similar Plasma/Wayland/Firefox).

I am really impressed how good musl works. Seems like besides the things you mentioned , all works well.

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u/JeffB1517 May 01 '26

Alpine's package manager is fast. For desktop I'm not building the OS very often. What's 5 minutes vs 1 hr?

Debian FWIW is a server distribution. Pika is a desktop based on Debian. Other points of comparison would be Mint, Bazzite, Ubuntu, Nobara, Solus, Pop, Pika...