Tux Machines

Alpine Linux 3.21: Lean, mean, and LoongArch-ready

Posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Dec 18, 2024

Quoting: Alpine Linux 3.21: Lean, mean, and LoongArch-ready —

A fresh release of the minimalist and very lightweight Alpine Linux is here, with support for Chinese LoongArch64 CPUs.

As usual for Alpine Linux, 3.21 follows closely upon the release of a new LTS kernel version. Kernel 6.12 was declared the new LTS on December 5, and this version of Alpine was announced the same day (see the bootnote for more information).

Alpine 3.21 has a raft of other updates along with the kernel: updated development tools including .NET 9, and new desktops including KDE Plasma 6.2, LXQt 2.1, and GNOME 47 (although gnome-software has been held back due to issues in handling Alpine's apk packaging format).

In 2021, Alpine 3.15 dropped MIPS64 support, but since then it's been adding new CPU architectures instead. The version before this one, Alpine 3.20, added RISC-V back in May.

Read on