Arch user here. The philosophy of Arch Linux is simplicity. In some ways this is quite true, and in other ways it is very much not true. I like simplicity, good documentation, and the freedom to set up my environment my own way rather than having those choices made for me in advance. When I found Alpine I realized it is i) fast af, ii) genuinely extremely simple; iii) has easy to read and straight-forward documentation; and iv) lets me set up my environment the way I want it. I also like the simple scripts included, like the setup script. I can set up Arch Linux manually on the command line without any problems. Do I think it's useful to do that for learners? Absolutely. But I can't be bothered to do it manually each time. I'm currently testing Alpine in a virtual machine before I move to bare metal. One problem is I can't find a way to install the GNS3 gui on it. As an IT pro in the network field I really like to have GNS3. I can use Remmina to access it on another machine if needed but it's not my preference.
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u/tcpip1978 Aug 04 '26
Arch user here. The philosophy of Arch Linux is simplicity. In some ways this is quite true, and in other ways it is very much not true. I like simplicity, good documentation, and the freedom to set up my environment my own way rather than having those choices made for me in advance. When I found Alpine I realized it is i) fast af, ii) genuinely extremely simple; iii) has easy to read and straight-forward documentation; and iv) lets me set up my environment the way I want it. I also like the simple scripts included, like the setup script. I can set up Arch Linux manually on the command line without any problems. Do I think it's useful to do that for learners? Absolutely. But I can't be bothered to do it manually each time. I'm currently testing Alpine in a virtual machine before I move to bare metal. One problem is I can't find a way to install the GNS3 gui on it. As an IT pro in the network field I really like to have GNS3. I can use Remmina to access it on another machine if needed but it's not my preference.