Alpine Linux A modular embedded Linux distribution
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Alpine Linux Description

A modular embedded Linux distribution Alpine Linux started out Gentoo style, but its self-hosting now. The network configuration is similar to Debian. If you've used a busybox based system before, its pretty good. The Alpine developers have contributed a number of enhancements to busybox to make the system run like any other.But it is a busybox-based system. By default, there are no manpages; busybox applets don't have all the features of the real applications, etc. So you will run into situations where things don't run like they do on a "real" linux system. When you get to those situations, remember these two things: * The base install is a good firewall/router - there's nothing there except the basics. You can probably get what you need using the tools that are there - although crudely. ( sh / awk / sed / grep can do everything Perl can do... Really.) * Alpine has a complete set of packages. But you need to explicitly choose what you want to install.Alpine Linux started as a fork of the LEAF project. The active project members of that team want to continue to make a Linux distribution that runs off a single floppy. And we think that's great. However, our needs required squid, DansGuardian, Samba, and a slew of other heavyweight applications - so we ended up with a set of packages that fit on a CD ROM.The LEAF concept of "run from RAM" has a number of appealing features, especially on a firewall:* If your configs are all on a floppy, an upgrade is as simple a burning a new CD and rebooting* If your configs are all on a write-protected floppy, recovering from root-kits is as simple as rebooting.On the other hand, there were some things we wanted to experiment with that weren't easy in the LEAF build environmnet at the time:* Complete build-from source environment (e.g. gentoo-style build world)* 2.6.x Kernel Support* Stack-Smashing support from GCC* PAX kernel security* Better package manager, with dependencies, upgrade path, pre and post install scripts, etc. What's New in This Release: · The main reason for the update is to fix a specific problem with overlays. · Also included are 6 updated packages, and a useful feature for SQL backups.

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