@protos @Pi_rat @mikuphile You haven't checked shit - if you spend 2 minutes looking at the installer, you find the GNU packages included that get installed.

Download the latest Alpine GNU/Linux installer and demonstrate that there is no GNU packages under apks/x86_64 - you can't, because there's GNU packages.

Yes, the packages for the system are compiled with gcc, but I didn't mention that.

The whole idea of dependencies is that the whole dependency, or parts of the dependency are included in the system!

https://www.alpinelinux.org/downloads/
>GnuPG signatures right there on the installation page.
Looks pretty GNU to me, but lets keep going.

>"Just enough to get you started. Network connection is required."
It's clear that the standard install image is just enough to get you started for the install of any of the missing GNU packages.

7z l alpine-standard-3.23.0-x86_64.iso
boot/grub
boot/grub/efi.img

There's the GNU GRUB OS - it's clearly GNU/Linux, but lets keep going.

cd apks/x86_64
ls gnutls-3.8.11-r0.apk libunistring-1.4.1-r0.apk ncurses-terminfo-base-6.5_p20251123-r0.apk wget-1.25.0-r2.apk gmp-6.3.0-r4.apk libncursesw-6.5_p20251123-r0.apk libidn2-2.3.8-r0.apk

That's a lot of GNU packages for something not GNU and that's ignoring the GNU dependences for all the other packages.


But there's an "Extended" install image as well; "Most common used packages included. Suitable for routers and servers." - which seems to in fact be what you would use if you don't want pretty much nothing to be included, just to be edgy.

cd apks/x86_64

Just in one pass I found;
ls coreutils-9.8-r1.apk coreutils-env-9.8-r1.apk coreutils-fmt-9.8-r1.apk coreutils-sha512sum-9.8-r1.apk gdbm-1.26-r0.apk gmp-6.3.0-r4.apk gnutls-3.8.11-r0.apk grub-2.12-r8.apk grub-bios-2.12-r8.apk grub-efi-2.12-r8.apk libgcc-15.2.0-r2.apk libidn2-2.3.8-r0.apk libncursesw-6.5_p20251123-r0.apk ncurses-terminfo-6.5_p20251123-r0.apk ncurses-terminfo-base-6.5_p20251123-r0.apk parted-3.6-r2.apk readline-8.3.1-r0.apk tar-1.35-r4.apk wget-1.25.0-r2.apk

Yes, that's right, Alpine GNU/Linux ships GNU coreutils, GNU grub, GNU ncurses, GMP, libgcc, GNU libidn2, GNU parted, GNU readline, GNU tar and GNU wget by default!

All the other packages look very similar to what comes with the default install of a typical GNU/Linux, a lot of proprietary software is included too.

(There's even Quagga there, which is an interesting choice and well that is still GNU code, as it was forked from GNU zebra).


Therefore Alpine is a GNU/Linux distro (with the only large change seemingly being musl instead of glibc - while GNU coreutils is used and even the GNU GRUB OS is used), although there is a barebones BusyBox/Linux installer just to be edgy (but of course still has GNU in it).