We love Alpine because `/` is a tmpfs. Your packages and other modifications are all reinstalled from scratch each boot. This gives such a clean install compared to most other distributions that it's not even funny, it's just sad.
We're not particularly interested in NixOS or Guix but we really really want to find a glibc-based distribution that works this way, because Alpine's musl is terrible for desktop use, but the package management is just so amazingly simple and beautiful on a daily driver.
Have you tried Fedora Silverblue[1] and its cousins? `root` is an immutable image powered by something akin to `git` but for OS files. You can layer RPMs (although you should use flatpak or containers wherever possible) and /etc is mutable but also tied to the deployed image[2]. You can rollback your system to previous images, rebase it to a completely different system (i.e from `silverblue/gnome` to `kinoite/plasma`) or build your own OS image for deployment instead.
It is a different desktop paradigm for sure (for one, you won't be using a standard package manager) and you do feel its rough edges sometimes, but it is my favorite Linux experience so far, where the OS doesn't stay on my way unless I want it to be in the way: I turn my PC on, use it as usual, desktop apps are updated on background with GNOME Software/flatpak and if there is a new image available, as soon as I reboot/shutdown, next time it is up, everything has been cleanly applied. Flatpak'd apps also won't spread files across the system, so everything is as self-contained as it can be.
This is actually run my computer, with a fedora-silverblue based image but my CLI is running alpine images.
So I made a little kit so anyone can do this on any linux so you can try all the cool stuff in there without the downsides of running a less popular configuration on the bare metal.
And since it's Alpine it's always a fast download vs. a heavier container.
Yes, we tried Fedora Silverblue, but it's a little too immutable as the Nvidia driver broke after a motherboard swap and we were completely unable to diagnose or debug anything because of the immutability.
GNOME Wayland seems to be best in class though. It's incredibly sad that it broke because we did enjoy it a lot. Better trackpad support than Windows for sure.
> pretending to be simple while shuffling complexity elsewhere
We don't particularly care if, say, `lbu` is a 10,000 line bash script, if it works. Actually, we've tinkered around with KISS Linux before, where a single bash script is responsible for being the entire package manager and rebuilding the entire operating system live. We were unable to get Nvidia working on it even before the motherboard swap though :)
We're not particularly interested in NixOS or Guix but we really really want to find a glibc-based distribution that works this way, because Alpine's musl is terrible for desktop use, but the package management is just so amazingly simple and beautiful on a daily driver.
-Emily (see HN profile for details)