Alpine Linux 3.20.0 Released
Quoting: Alpine 3.20.0 released | Alpine Linux —
We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.20.0, the first in the v3.20 stable series. Highlights
LLVM 18 Node.js (lts) 20.10 Python 3.12 Ruby 3.3 Rust 1.78 Crystal 1.12 GNOME 46 Go 1.22 KDE 6 Sway 1.9 .NET 8.0
An update
Linuxiac:
-
Alpine Linux 3.20 Debuts with Initial 64-Bit RISC-V Support
Alpine, a lightweight and secure Linux distribution, has just released its latest version, Alpine Linux 3.20.
This new release marks the beginning of the v3.20 stable series, bringing a suite of upgrades across its system packages and several significant changes, including initial support for the 64-bit RISC-V architecture.
LWN:
-
Alpine GNU/Linux 3.20.0 released
Version 3.20.0 of the Alpine Linux distribution has been released with initial support for 64-bit RISC-V. Other important changes include updates to GNOME 46, KDE Plasma 6, and replacing Redis with Valkey due to Redis's adoption of a non-free license model. See the release notes for more on this release.
It's FOSS News:
-
Alpine Linux Shows Signs of RISC-V Architecture Support
Alpine Linux is a popular choice among users who prefer a lightweight Linux distro experience. Interesting bit: What started off as a fork of the LEAF Project now focuses on two key things: Security, and Reliability.
Over the years, Alpine Linux has been receiving regular updates with varying degrees of fixes and improvements. One such update is the recently introduced Alpine Linux 3.2.0 release, which has some important changes to offer.
Let's take a brief look at it.
Fossbytes:
-
Alpine Linux 3.20.0: Introducing 64-bit RISC-V Architecture - Fossbytes
Alpine Linux is an independent, non-commercial Linux distribution designed for power users who value security, simplicity, and resource efficiency. It uses Musl Libc and Busybox, resulting in a small and resource-efficient system. All userland binaries, prioritizing security, compile as Position Independent Executables (PIE) with stack smashing protection, helping to prevent the exploitation of various vulnerabilities.
The Alpine Linux team recently announced the release of Alpine Linux 3.20.0, introducing the v3.20 stable series.
The Register:
-
Alpine Linux 3.20 arrives with support for 64-bit RISC-V
Alpine Linux 3.20.0 is out, with initial support for a whole new CPU architecture: RISC-V.
It also includes KDE Plasma 6 and GNOME 46, and due to Redis changing its license, Alpine has the new Valkey key-value database in its place. Alpine's former default Xfce desktop, showing enviably svelte vital statistics: it uses 1.1GB of disk, as little as most distros use RAM.
Alpine's former default Xfce desktop, showing enviably svelte vital statistics: it uses 1.1GB of disk, as little as most distros use RAM - click to enlarge
The Register has looked at several releases of Alpine in recent years: in 2021, when it dropped MIPS64 support; then, more recently, we reviewed version 3.16 in 2022, and version 3.18 last year. That release resolved a longstanding issue by adding support for DNS over TCP.
With the latest release, the distro supports eight different architectures: IBM Z mainframes and POWER servers (the latter in 64-bit little-endian form), 64-bit bit RISC-V, both 32-bit and 64-bit x86, and three forms of Arm hardware: Armhf, ARMv7, and Aarch64 (which between cover every Raspberry Pi from the Pi Zero and 1 up to the Pi 5, along with multiple other Arm single board computers.)
Alpine is a lightweight, minimalist distro, but an unusually flexible one. It supports three different installation types. In Diskless Mode, it loads into and runs entirely from RAM. If you want to add additional software or have changes persist across reboots, you must back them up to the boot media with the Alpine local backup command, lbu. In Data Disk Mode, it still runs from RAM, but it mounts a swap partition and the /var directory tree from partitions on a fixed disk. That makes it easier to have system state persist across reboots, and use configurations that don't fit entirely into memory. Finally, System Disk Mode is a traditional installation to disk: by default, it expects to take over the entire drive, but with a few extra steps you can do custom partitions or dual boot Alpine with other OSes.