Notices by Natanael Copa (ncopa@fosstodon.org)

@gregkh That was fun read! I'm missing RISC-V, and Alpine Linux machines though!

Alpine Linux is moving to a /usr-merged filesystem layout.

https://alpinelinux.org/posts/2025-10-01-usr-merge.html

#AlpineLinux #usrmerge

OpenSSL 3.5.3 introduces a regression that makes ssh break on openssl version check.
https://github.com/openssl/project/issues/1621

If you use Alpine Linux:
- 3.22: make sure you get >=3.5.3-r1
- edge: make sure you get >=3.5.3-r2

Those include backports of upstream fixes.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

#AlpineLinux #OpenSSL #regression

@mirabilos

Would you prefer we’d allow completely anonymous people make changes to the software millions run?

We are simplifying the Alpine developer onboarding process.

https://alpinelinux.org/posts/2025-08-30-new-alpine-developers-process.html

#AlpineLinux #FOSS #maintainers

apk-tools 3 was merged to #AlpineLinux edge. Hold on to your hats!

Some of the new things are listed here:
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/82593#note_520288

I submitted a session "Why musl libc matters" to the All systems go! conference, but it got rejected. I take that as a "No it doesn't".

Too bad. Would have been nice to talk with the systemd devs face to face.

@MegaMichelle @hipsterelectron apk3 introduces a new index format that can be memory mapped so we avoid memory copying. It will not be slower.

@hipsterelectron @stuartyeates @MegaMichelle I don’t think abuild checks for zip bombs. But it will sign it and guarantee that the bomb has not been tampered with on the way to delivery

@MegaMichelle @hipsterelectron so when other pkg managers have finished download and start verify checksum, apk is already done.

@MegaMichelle @hipsterelectron Usually package managers do: read from net, write to local disk, another read from local disk and verify checksum/signature, another read to decompress and write. So 3 reads and two (1.5) writes of the same data.

Idea in apk is: one read from network, calculate checksum and decompress while waiting for network IO, write extracted file to temp file in target dir. verify checksum/sig and rename. 1 read 1 write.

We are planning to update apk-tools to 3.0 in edge repository on July 1, 2025.

We are keeping the apk 2 index and package formats for now, so everything *should* just work, but scripts parsing the output of apk may need to be adjusted.

#AlpineLinux

sure you can use AI to "brainstorm" ideas, but it is so much better - and nicer - to brainstorm ideas with colleges or friends.

@wolf480pl if you don't have colleges or friends, maybe you have a good old enemy you can brainstorm with?

@AdrianVovk "So what should distros without systemd do?
First, consider using GNOME with systemd."

Alpine Linux can not do that because
systemd explicitly does not support musl, and they have been pretty clear that they never will.

So the only options we have are re-implementing systemd, or re-implementing glibc. Not only the public APIs but also the internals.

Very frustrating.

@Foxboron @AdrianVovk I would also like to point out that Adelie Linux devs have been doing impressive work trying to make musl work in upstream systemd.

The difficulties are not the technical ones.

Seems like we have another year with #AlpineLinux on ppc64le https://osuosl.org/blog/osl-future-update/

So official golang images does not have riscv64, (but they have mips64le) Probably due to lack of riscv64 in debian.

Good that there exists golang:*-alpine images with riscv64 support.

New #AlpineLinux stable releases with security fixes for #musl and #OpenSSL

https://alpinelinux.org/posts/Alpine-3.18.12-3.19.7-3.20.6-3.21.3-released.html

@ariadne too bad they don’t support musl