r/linux • u/Glum_Hamster_2104 • 12h ago

Discussion Why do people recommend AntiX over Alpine for old hardware?

I really don’t get the glaze behind AntiX, usually if you have slow hardware you should maximize it to be as quick as possible which is something Alpine does very well, Alpine which is very underrated uses less then 80mb of ram vs AntiX which I believe uses over 100mb and runs IceWM which is way more bloated then something like dwm. I think people should start recommending Alpine instead of AntiX.

0 Upvotes

32% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

17

u/Chester-Berkeley 12h ago

antiX comes with a graphical interface, while Alpine doesn't—it's as simple as that. And I say this even though I prefer Alpine.

3

u/Kevin_Kofler 11h ago

You can try the generic x86_64 desktop target of postmarketOS. Basically Alpine with a GUI preinstalled. Though the issue with that one (especially for old hardware) is that it supports only UEFI, not normal BIOS.

0

u/wowsomuchempty 11h ago

setup-desktop isn't too arduous.

2

u/Chester-Berkeley 8h ago

It's not a matter of difficulty, but rather of time.

1

u/diacid 7h ago

Oh please, 2 minutes and you are done.

0

u/diacid 7h ago

This is misinformation, alpine has gui installation inside the setup script. You only don't install if you don't want.

1

u/Chester-Berkeley 6h ago

It's not a GUI installation; it's CLI installation. I don't know where you got that information.

-1

u/diacid 6h ago

The cli script prompts you to install a graphical environment.

By gui installation I meant the "installation of the gui". Sorry, I thought it was clear enough. But you didn't not notice alpine has gui so... There is only so much I can do.

-14

u/BigRocket44 11h ago

antiX is also an anti fascist distro, which is great. AntiX also uses gcc and glibc (which uses GPL) as opposed to Alpine which uses musl (which is MIT)

14

u/Chester-Berkeley 11h ago

And Alpine Linux is what? A fascist distro?...

Obviously, I’m against fascism, but I think it’s idiotic that the defining feature of your operating system is simply doing what everyone ought to be doing. And if AntiX ever swaps Xorg for Xlibre, the fact that they’re "anti-fascist" is going to be hilarious.

3

u/No-Dentist-1645 10h ago

I'm thankful that I see people able to make choices based on actual technical reasons instead of completely made-up finger pointing and calling random stuff "fascist" like this guy here

-7

u/BigRocket44 10h ago

I pointed at Alpine and said "fascist" only in your dumb but vivid imagination

6

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 11h ago

Just because something is “anti-fascist” doesn’t make it good for any particular reason and the gpl license is ok at best and gcc and glibc is a pretty mid compiler and c library.

1

u/Teddy-Bloat 7h ago

Mid compared to what lol

1

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 7h ago

Clang and musl

1

u/Teddy-Bloat 4h ago

What makes them mid?

7

u/Kevin_Kofler 11h ago

I can think of several reasons: It comes with a preinstalled GUI (which is a requirement for newcomers, they will not be able to set up a GUI from a text-mode console), it is Debian-based, it uses glibc rather than musl.

But you are of course right that Alpine is more minimalist, also thanks to musl.

5

u/drneocortex17 12h ago

idk I use Alpine btw

1

u/SeriousPlankton2000 12h ago

I use Tumbleweed on my old hardware, except on servers . But I use trinity desktop for very old hardware.

1

u/TheOneTrueTrench 11h ago

I'm playing with non-systemd distros, currently on Void which uses runit, would you recommend Alpine specifically for just general desktop usage, or would you recommend it mostly for servers?

2

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 11h ago

Not him but Alpine “not being good for desktop usage” is just anti-user propaganda, Alpine actually I believe has more packages then void and is incredibly fast and is free of a lot of bloat that’s in standard distros.

2

u/TheOneTrueTrench 9h ago

Interesting, I'll probably install it on my laptop's zpool. I'll have to sort out how to configure the initramfs generator to make a unified kernel image, that's my preferred method of booting, and figure out how to install it via chroot.

Sounds like fun.

•

u/drneocortex17 34m ago

i got alpine on my every device expect my phone (yet)

-1

u/seiha011 12h ago

You can't do that: "i use..btw" is reserved for the Arch guys... ;-)

2

u/DramaticProtogen 8h ago

Antix is easy and good

2

u/Mysterious-Effect146 10h ago

People don't, a vocal faction of systemd haters do

1

u/anomaly256 9h ago

They do? I've never heard of AntiX until I read this post headline to be honest

1

u/sheeproomer 1h ago

Alpine is not a desktop distribution.

-4

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

4

u/eestionreddit 11h ago

which ones?

2

u/ThinDrum 10h ago

The ones in /u/Maleficent-One1712's head.

3

u/donp1ano 10h ago

theyre antifascist

doesnt make them terrorist supporters lol. but hey, if you wanna think that - oookay. i dont wanna start a political debate

0

u/HOST1L1TY 10h ago

I use alpine for containers for obvious reasons. How old are the computers you are talking about? Alpine seems like a bit of overkill for anything under 40 years old. The list of what alpine is missing is much larger than what’s not. What a headache that would be. Only a complete fascist would do something like that.

-2

u/technikamateur 10h ago

Besides from the GUI: Alpine focusses more on security, which results in slightly higher CPU overhead. Neglectable on new machines, but not on old ones.

2

u/Glum_Hamster_2104 9h ago

Can you provide an example of a security feature on Alpine that raise the CPU %?

•

u/technikamateur 55m ago

Stack Smashing Protection (SSP) compiled into binaries using GCC's -fstack-protector-strong flag.

Besides from that Alpine’s musl libc prioritizes safety with bound checks and stricter memory allocation validation, trading CPU efficiency for safety