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Indeed, in a desktop Linux system, the X Window System is a more salient and less replaceable part than GNU. The Alpine Linux distribution has shown this by replacing GNU with musl and BusyBox, though it appears to still use GCC instead of Clang. So I've taken to referring to the desktop stack as "X11/Linux".

• Linux Router with VPN on a Raspberry Pi
• Linux Router with VPN on a Raspberry Pi (IPv6)

I'm using the IPv6 implementation. That uses the Global Linked Address for VLAN2 and a ULA (Unique Linked Address) for VLAN3. That way I get IPv6 connectivity everywhere, the latter also requires the VPN provider to issue with an IPv6 address, which mine does.

• Linux Router with VPN on a Raspberry Pi
• Linux Router with VPN on a Raspberry Pi (IPv6)

I'm using the IPv6 implementation. That uses the Global Linked Address for VLAN2 and a ULA (Unique Linked Address) for VLAN3. That way I get IPv6 connectivity everywhere, the latter also requires the VPN provider to issue with an IPv6 address, which mine does.

Several ISP's are MITM'ing your data regardless if whether you use their DNS.

I wasn't aware of any ISPs in Australia currently doing MiTM attacks. Could you name them? I think at this point it's just the ISPs DNS server.

I have a local resolver on my network, which forwards all DNS lookups to dnscrypt, that in turn performs said lookups over the VPN tunnel. See Unbound DNS forwarder with dnscrypt

I go one step further and forward all traffic over the VPN based on the source addresss subnet and VLAN tag, ie all traffic from 192.168.2.0/24 with VLAN ID 2 goes directly out to the ISP. All traffic from 192.168.3.0/24 on VLAN ID 3 goes out the VPN provider. I have a couple of custom rules for certain IPs that never change like my mail server and I just change the route based on the fwmark.

For the masses though things like DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS should be available soon and that would make things more difficult.

I think was only ever intended to stop the plebs.

Alpine Linux

You're welcome.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

The vast majority of daily Linux users are using Android, the vast majority of them probably don't even know it's Linux let alone what Linux is, and Android doesn't use GNU utilities in their userland.

GNU is how we got where we are today, so all Linux users owe it a massive debt of gratitude for getting us here. Desktop Linux users, in the main part, still owe it thanks daily, but desktop Linux users are a tiny minority — both of Linux users, and of desktop users.

All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

If you want to be pedantic, be fully pedantic. Not all of them are GNU/Linux distributions. For example, Alpine Linux. There is also a list of other Linux-based products which don't use the GNU userland on the Busybox site. There have even been a couple of attempts to wed a BSD userland to a Linux kernel, but none of them appear to still be around AFAICT. Seems like they should take the Solaris 2 approach of adding a BSD userland directory into their distribution for people who need it for scripts, or just want to use it to be perverse.

MUSL and busybox (FYI, busybox is GPL) fit better with the first of the Alpine Linux's stated design goals which are "Small, simple, and secure." MUSL's dynamic libc is only 527K where as glibc is 7.9M. Static hello program is 13K with MUSL and 662K with glibc. Busybox is less than 1M, however coreutils is >13M, vim is >28M, GNU sed/awk is > 2M, etc. MUSL and Busybox make a smaller system than GNU libc, GNU coreutils, and other GNU userspace programs replaced by busybox.

About Alpine>

C standard library comparisons

The 4.6 kernel series is already end of life, 4.7 is only marked stable, and 4.8 hasn't yet been released.. Currently Linux Kernel 4.4 is the latest longterm Linux kernel and is projected to be supported until Feb. 2018. With the exception of kernel 3.2, support will end for the other Linux longterm kernels either this year or next year.

If you are creating a long term support release of a Linux distro, it makes sense to choose a longterm support kernel over either an EOL kernel release or an unreleased kernel (which likely bring its own set of issues). If the distro did choose to kernel without long term support, they would be on the hook for back porting critical patches into the kernel. Since they did choose a long term kernel release, they can focus on what sets Mint apart, maintaining their Cinnamon interface, rather than maintaining a custom kernel release.

On a related note, Alpine Linux and Slackware Linux also chose the 4.4 kernel.

http://alpinelinux.org/

Yes, but why do you recommend a crap choice?

Some better ones:

https://linuxmint.com
https://kororaproject.org
https://getfedora.org
http://alpinelinux.org
http://www.ghostbsd.org
http://www.openbsd.org
https://www.freebsd.org

> What you need is a ulibc distribution that is designed for virtualization
> utilizing a KVM kernel and a uclibc user land based on debian.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but Alpine Linux http://alpinelinux.org/ is a strong candidate. It's uclibc-based, and runs on busybox's utilities, which is yet another simplification. It'll even run using busybox's mdev instead of udev. That's assuming you don't run some braindead "desktop environment" which depends directly on udev, or evdev, which in turn depends on udev. That rules out GNOME and XFCE

Gentoo http://www.gentoo.org/ can be coerced to a minimal, text-only glibc build, via judicious use of the USE flags. This includes replacing udev with mdev. Again, avoid the flashy "desktop environments". If you want to really go barebones, it has an "embedded", uclibc-based option. For experts only.

Alpine Linux, a small, secure and powerful distro with good quagga/bgpd support.