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Alpine Linux

Alpine Linux has one of the fastest boot times of any operating system. It's famous because of its small size and it's heavily used in containers.

It's also well known for wide use in embedded devices and as a base system for many enterprise routers. The postmarketOS project, which is designed to run on mobile devices, is based on Alpine Linux.

Alpine Linux follows the principles of the SSS distro: Simple+Small+Secure: due to usage of muslc as the minimalist libc, BusyBox simple coreutils (with possibilities to alternate on inflated original packages of each coreutils tools also) and userland binaries compiled as Position Independent Executables (PIE) with stack smashing protection.


Alpine Linux Comparison Table

Feature 3.2 3.3 3.22 3.3 3.21 6 Feature
Release Date 2026-01-27 2026-01-27 2026-01-27 2026-01-27 2025-10-08 2025-02-13 Release Date
End Of Life - End Of Life
Price (US$) Free Free Free Free Free Free Price (US$)
Image Size (MB) 300-1400 200-1200 200-1000 200-900 200-900 200-900 Image Size (MB)
Free Download ISO ISO ISO ISO ISO ISO Download
Installation Text mode Text mode Text mode Text mode Text mode Text mode Installation
Default Desktop - Default Desktop
Default Browser Links Links Links Links Links Links Default Browser
Package Management APK APK APK APK APK APK Package Management
Release Model Fixed Fixed Fixed Fixed Fixed Fixed Release Model
Office Suite - Office Suite
Processor Architecture aarch64, armv7, i486, loongarch64, ppc64le, riscv64, s390x, x86_64 aarch64, armhf, i486, loongarch64, ppc64, riscv, s390x, x86_64 aarch64, armhf, i486, loongarch64, ppc64, riscv, s390x, x86_64 aarch64, armhf, i486, loongarch64, ppc64, s390x, x86_64 aarch64, armhf, i486, ppc64, s390x, x86_64 aarch64, armhf, i486, ppc64, s390x, x86_64 Processor Architecture
Init Software Busybox, OpenRC Busybox, OpenRC Busybox, OpenRC Busybox, OpenRC Busybox, OpenRC Busybox, OpenRC Init Software
Journaled File Systems ext4 ext4 ext4 ext4 ext4 ext4 Journaled File Systems
Multilingual - Multilingual
Asian Language Support - Asian Language Support
Full Package List 3.2 3.3 3.22 3.3 3.21 6 Full Package List

Buy a Bootable USB or Download Alpine Linux

RELEASE DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 2024

We take security seriously

Once you have downloaded an image, be sure to verify it for both security and integrity.

By calculating the image’s checksum on your own computer and comparing it to the original checksum, you can verify the image has not been tampered with or corrupted. Images are also gpg signed with Fedora keys to demonstrate their integrity.

  • Click the verify button to download the checksum file for your downloaded image.

  • Import Linuxrpms's GPG key(s)

                    curl -O https://linuxrpms.com/linuxrpms-gpg.pub
                  

    You can verify the details of the GPG key(s) here.

  • Verify the checksum file is valid

                    gpgv --keyring ./linuxrpms-gpg.pub alpinelinux-*-CHECKSUM
                  
  • Verify the checksum matches

                    sha256sum -c alpinelinux-*-CHECKSUM
                  

If the output states that the file is valid, then it's ready to use!

DVD for Intel and AMD x86_64 systems

Alpine Linux Live ISO iso 4.3 GiB

By clicking on and downloading Alpine Linux, you agree to comply with the US Export Control Policy.

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