Alpine shows up when the hardware is old and the job is small. The package set is apk, the base system is tiny, and OpenRC is not systemd. I use it for an old laptop that should block ads or serve video and then stay out of the way. I do not use it as my daily desktop, and I do not pretend it is a Fedora CoreOS replacement. CoreOS is declarative and rpm-ostree shaped. Alpine is a small host that runs Docker.

Two posts live here. One turns a laptop into a Pi-hole with Docker Compose and a nightly update script, after the native Pi-hole installer refused to cooperate with apk. The community repository has to be enabled during setup-alpine or Docker will not be in the repos you expect. The other post is Jellyfin on the same kind of host. Media metadata and a library disk will dwarf the OS, which is the point of a small base system.

If you want Quadlets, nftables, and Ignition, leave this tag and read the CoreOS notes. If you want a lightweight desktop with a normal package manager and a six-month Fedora kernel, the XFCE spin is the closer cousin. Alpine is the box I am willing to reinstall from a USB because almost nothing unique lives in the root filesystem. The compose files and the media disks are the backup.

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