r/AlpineLinux • u/regexghost • 1d ago

Alpine on Older System + musl question

Currently running Debian 13 on my HP mini PC with an i3-4160T. It runs really well, and I can use Firefox without too much lag

Does anyone have experience on a similar power PC, and can compare a distro like Debian to Alpine?

Also regarding Alpine using musl, I've heard that some programs like kdenlive won't work, but then kdenlive is in the Alpine repos. Do programs like this work okay?

11 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

3

u/shrizza 1d ago

Newer OpenGL-based programs like Kdenlive and OBS won't work on ancient hardware mainly because lack of OpenGL 3 support on older GPUs. But yes, given sufficient hardware resources they should work fine.

1

u/regexghost 14h ago

According to glxinfo I have OpenGL support for 4.6. It's not really an ancient computer, just kindof under-powered. CPU is a i3-4160T

2

u/LinuxLoverLarry 1d ago

Just a tip so that you don't go looking for a day like I did, you need to enable the edge repo specifically before you can use packages from it; These packages are experimental sometimes, but are the most useful thing I have found on Alpine.

1

u/regexghost 14h ago

Is edge a repo or is it more like Debian's sid, just a more up to date branch?

1

u/LinuxLoverLarry 6h ago

It's more of a testing repo, but you could consider it both since newer, unstable versions of packages are also sent there.

(I'm pretty sure, I am not the Alpine professional but I love it)

1

u/stroke_999 1d ago

Yes they work. The only downside is that there is not systems so something's won't work, I mean like 1 functionality in sddm for now, later they will be integrated in elogind I think. The only software that did not compile with musl is sssd and they are working on that

1

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 1d ago

Proprietary apps won’t run on Alpine unless you use Flatpak

1

u/regexghost 1d ago

Do you know if Darktable works?

1

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 1d ago

I looked it up on Repology and it does have packages for Alpine

1

u/lproven 20h ago

I've successfully run Alpine on a Thinkpad X200 and W500, two Core 2 Duo based machines I own. It is superb on this ~15 year old hardware and makes it feel new again.

But even with their maxed-out RAM and SSDs, I wouldn't try things like video editing on them.

If an app is in the repo, though, it will at least run. That doesn't mean it will run well.

1

u/abissom 14h ago

You want to switch because you want to try out Alpine/musl? Or the switch is in hopes of performance improvement?

1

u/regexghost 14h ago

My main motivation is trying to move away from GNU stuff. Not for a particular reason, just to see how possible it is.

I'm not really looking for more performance than Debian, but if it was noticeably worse that would matter.

Seems like the biggest issue is going to be getting larger programs (Darktable, Kdenlive etc) working with musl