In the latest release of Alpine Linux 3.20, a minimalistic distribution based on the MUSL system library and Busybox utilities, has been made available. This distribution prioritizes security with SSP protection (Stack Smashing Protection) and uses OpenRC as the initialization system. Alpine also features its own package manager, APK, for package management. It is widely used for official Docker containers and is a key component in projects like Postmarketos. ISO images for various architectures such as x86_64, ARMHF, AARCH64, ARMV7, PPC64le, and S390x are available in different versions including standard, network boot, extended, virtual machine, and Xen hypervisor variants.
In the latest release:
- Initial support for the 64-bit RISC-V architecture has been added with the creation of a minirotfs image sized at 3 Mb.
- Support for new versions of graphical environments like KDE 6, GNOME 46, and SWAY 1.9 has been included.
- Updates to package versions including LLVM 18, Node.js 20.10, Python 3.12, Ruby 3.3, Rust 1.78, Crystal 1.12, GO 1.22, .NET 8.0, GRUB 2.12, Nginx 1.26, NIM 2.0, Openjdk 22, R 4.4, among others.
- Packages containing the Redis DBMS have been replaced by VALKEY FORK due to Redis transitioning to a proprietary license.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.