Alpine Linux
| Alpine Linux | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Alpine Linux Development Team |
| OS family | Linux (Unix-like) |
| Working state | Active |
| Source model | Open source |
| Initial release | August 2005 |
| Latest release | 3.23.2 / 17 December 2025 |
| Repository | |
| Marketing target | General-purpose. Security, embedded systems and other resource-constrained systems, such as containers. |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Package manager | APK (Alpine Package Keeper) |
| Supported platforms | |
| Kernel type | Monolithic (Linux) |
| Userland | BusyBox |
| Influenced | postmarketOS |
| Default user interface | Ash |
| Official website | www |
Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution that uses musl, BusyBox, and OpenRC instead of glibc, GNU Core Utilities, and systemd, respectively. This makes Alpine one of few Linux distributions not to be based on the latter. For security, Alpine compiles all user-space binaries as position-independent executables with stack-smashing protection. Because of its small size and rapid startup, it is commonly used in containers providing quick boot-up times, on virtual machines (e.g., OS-level virtualization) as well as on real hardware in embedded devices, such as routers, servers and NAS.