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Alpine Linux 3.6.0 Released (alpinelinux.org)
An anonymous reader quotes DistroWatch:
Natanael Copa has announced the release of Alpine Linux 3.6.0. Alpine Linux is an independent, minimal operating system that is well suited to running servers, routers and firewalls. Version 3.6.0 introduces support for 64-bit POWER machines, 64-bit IBM z Systems computers and features many up to date packages, including PHP 7.1, LLVM 4.0 and version 6.3 of the GNU Compiler.
"Noteworthy new packages" include Rust 1.17.0 and Cargo 0.18.0, as well as Julia 0.5.2, as we ll as "significant updates" like Go 1.8, Python 3.6, and Ruby 2.4. And in addition, "MD5 and SHA-1 hashes have been removed from APKBUILDs, being obsoleted by SHA-512."
"Noteworthy new packages" include Rust 1.17.0 and Cargo 0.18.0, as well as Julia 0.5.2, as we ll as "significant updates" like Go 1.8, Python 3.6, and Ruby 2.4. And in addition, "MD5 and SHA-1 hashes have been removed from APKBUILDs, being obsoleted by SHA-512."
Linux has 2% market share. This is a tiny fraction of the 2%. Why should I care at all about Alpine Linux? How does this affect me or anyone else? Please do tell. Of course, the moderators will censor me as a "troll" rather than answering the question, because they are chickenshits.
Nope:
Seriously, WTF.
Their statement is "We have no plans to implement/switch to systemd, and will try preventing it will ever happen." Looks like there _are_ several sane distributions still around.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Minimal, but includes Python, Ruby, Go and Rust?
I know and have used alpine ... mainly in docker containers, I'm not super thrilled with it. Overall, it's main selling point is that, initially... it's small....
Finally some sanity appears... but they don't have lots of commercial backers. Hopefully they won't get turned to $hit like the rest.
Actually not having these commercial backers may be an advantage here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
can't find
Alpine looks pretty cool. A sane init system, musl instead of libc, a decent package manager, what more could you want?
A couple of years ago, I inherited a proprietary ARM board with a large number of GBE NICs, an unmaintained vendor kernel, and the worst userspace you can imagine (and I know you can imagine a lot). I spent half a day trying to build an Alpine userspace for armhf and get it installed on the board.
I finally gave up. It took me 20 minutes to set up debootstrap under qemu, another 20 minutes to coerce debootstrap into using sysvinit instead of systemd. Tar.gz, scp, replace the root filesystem, and the board is running Debian Jessie userspace.
I haven't looked at Alpine since then. Is there now a convenient way to build a custom Alpine root filesystem?
But people who use Power64 and especially IBM z typically have deep pockets and very good technical reasons to use them. They don't need a lot of these customers to be successful.
Too many problems to cite them all. But the main one was hard system lockup. The log files didn't give a clue. The system would just freeze. Run fine for 5 or 6 days, and then just freeze solid. Couldn't ssh into it. Couldn't use the console. Just a hard freeze. Do not use this for anything approaching mission critical because it will let you down at the worst possible time. Maybe I'll give this version a shot to see if they've fixed the problem.
In the platforms listed above - 64-bit POWER machines, 64-bit IBM z Systems computers - Windows 10 does not exist. Linux based OSs are the only game in town. IBM does a distro (I believe it's a RHEL port), and now, you have Alpine Linux w/ one as well. I wonder whether IBM still bothers about AIX at all?
Won't even look at it.
In addition to the attention it gets as a base image for containers they actually ship a fairly well supported version for Raspberry Pi: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
I've had far fewer issues with it than I have with Raspbian and it's default ramdisk configuration means that you are very unlikely to end up with a corrupted SD card in long lived embedded situations.
At one point in the past, tiny-cc (tcc) was able to build the linux kernel. Can it still do so? If so that would remove one barrier to a GNU-less Linux distro.
(Not that I care myself too much.. but the thought occurred to me reading this thread.)
I don't know how many Linux desktop distro's their are now. But considering the dismal user stats for Linux desktop as a whole. Can't be too many running each one.
Sadly the most popular Linux has been Chrome OS thanks to cheap Chromebooks and a desperate poor US educational system.
Both MD5 and SHA-1 are perfectly good hashing algorithms for non-cyptographic purposes. Removing them make me think that the Alpine folks don't know exactly what they are doing.
Based on how the summary is worded,
And in addition, "MD5 and SHA-1 hashes have been removed from APKBUILDs, being obsoleted by SHA-512.
I'm guessing they replaced MD5 and SHA1 hashes for validating their repositories. Since both MD5 has collision vulnerabilities and SHA1 is starting to have attacks as well, it is probably wise to obsolete these hashes in favor of a new hash. Even Git developers are starting to make plans to move away from SHA1.