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Anybody using Alpine for a minimal Desktop OS? How does it compare to something like Arch?

I gave it a try, but it's a bit less well documented and has less packages than Arch.

If heading this route, perhaps Guix or Nix are a nice option too. As you can get something declarative and with traceable builds.

I'm hoping a minimal distro that has a nix-like package manager gets mainstream soon.

Thanks! I'll give it a try then and maybe Nix too!

You can use the Guix package manager on top of any distribution and get declarative builds. https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-... Like the main GNU page says, it's not distribution ready, but it's close. In fact if you run it on top of Arch (just install the minimal requirements via pacman, then defer to guix) or Alpine you've pretty much got your minimal distribution with declarative package management.

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