The Alpine Linux development team released the Alpine Linux 3.18 system update on May 9th, using musl, BusyBox, and OpenRC technologies instead of the more commonly used GNU technologies.
Five and a half months after the release of Alpine Linux 3.17, the Alpine Linux 3.18 release ships with the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series, with signed kernel modules.
The developer reminds that verified kernel modules are not enforced by default, which means that third-party modules with AKMS (Note: Alpine Kernel Module Support) will still work.
Alpine Linux 3.18 is also supported by the musl libc 1.2.4 C standard library, which has a TCP fallback in the DNS resolver. Also included in this release are Python 3.11, Ruby 3.2, Node.js 20.1, Go 1.20, and Rust 1.69.
According to the developers, Alpine Linux 3.18 provides Python precompiled files in pyc format in a separate package. Users can avoid installing these packages if they want to save space by running the apk add !pyc command.
Another interesting change in this release is experimental support for unattended installs via the tiny-cloud bootstrapper, which performs critical initialization tasks when a cloud instance first boots.
Finally, all packages targeting 64-bit (x86_64), 32-bit (x86) and PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64le) architectures in the new Alpine Linux releases have been linked with DT_RELR, which should reduce the size of compiled binaries.
The new Alpine Linux release supports the latest GNOME 44 and KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS desktop releases.
Users can download Alpine Linux 3.18 from the official site as Standard, Extended, Netboot, Raspberry Pi, Generic ARM, and Mini Root Filesystem editions for 64-bit (x86_64), AArch64 (ARM64), ARMv7, 32-bit (x86) , PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64le) and IBM System z (s390x) architectures.
Existing Alpine Linux users will be able to upgrade their installation using the default package management system by running the apk upgrade –available command.
