Alpine Linux 3.24 Brings COSMIC Desktop to Its Community Repository

Source Domain: linuxiac.com

Alpine, a lightweight, musl-based, and systemd-free (OpenRC is the default init system) Linux distribution, has just released version 3.24, powered by the Linux kernel 6.18 LTS, marking the initial release in the new 3.24 stable series of this security-focused distribution.

This release updates packages for desktop environments, development tools, boot components, and server software. Major updates include GRUB 2.14, GCC 15.2, LLVM 22.1.3, Rust 1.96, Go 1.26, Python 3.14, PHP 8.5.7, Ruby 3.4.9, Node.js 24.16 LTS, OpenJDK 25.0.3_p9, and .NET 10.0.8.

For desktops, Alpine Linux 3.24 includes GNOME 50 (v50.2) and KDE Plasma 6.6 (v6.6.5). But the big news is that COSMIC, System76’s Rust-based desktop environment, is now available in the community repository.

Moreover, this release introduces several improvements to the installer. The setup-alpine installer now supports the Limine bootloader and IPv6. Systems installed via serial console automatically configure the bootloader and kernel for serial console support, streamlining deployments on headless and server systems.

For developers, the py3-setuptools package has been updated to version 82.0, removing the deprecated pkg_resources module. So, projects still using pkg_resources must migrate to supported alternatives.

The qemu-binfmt service from qemu-openrc is now deprecated. Users should use binfmt.d configuration files from user-mode QEMU packages along with the binfmt service.

Repository changes include moving GTK 3 from the main branch to the community branch. Additional GTK 2 and Qt5 packages, as well as libsoup 2, have been removed as part of ongoing deprecation.

As with previous major upgrades, users moving between major Alpine versions should run apk upgrade –available. GRUB users should also run grub-install after upgrading to ensure the updated GRUB version is installed to disk.

For more information, see the announcement or visit the release notes. Downloads are available…

Source