AArch64 (ARM64) hardware architectures are now supported

Dec 22, 2016 22:22 GMT  ·  By

Today, December 22, 2016, Alpine Linux creator Natanael Copa was proud to announce the general availability of the first stable release in the 3.5 series of the independently-developed GNU/Linux distribution.

Being a major release and all that, the Alpine Linux 3.5 series introduces a bunch of exciting new features, among which we can mention support for the ZFS file system as root, support for AArch64 (ARM64 or ARM 64-bit) hardware architectures, but only uboot is currently working, and replacement of OpenSSL libraries with LibreSSL.

There's also better support for the Python 3 interpreted, dynamic programming language, along with initial support for the OCaml, JRuby, and R programming languages, an updated graphics stack based on the X.Org Server 1.18.4 display server, and rename of the nodejs package to nodejs-current.

"The nodejs package was renamed to nodejs-current and moved to the community repository. The nodejs-lts package was renamed to nodejs. This means that you get the LTS version if you do apk add nodejs," explained the developers in the release announcement for Alpine Linux 3.5.0.

Samba 4.5.3,  GTK+ 3.22.5, and GNU C Library 2.50.2 have landed

As expected, many of the core components and applications available in Alpine Linux's software repositories have been updated to their latest versions at the moment of the launch. For example, users will enjoy Samba 4.5.3, GNU C Library 2.50.2, GTK+ 3.22.5, PostgreSQL 9.6, and LibreOffice 5.2.3.

For those unfamiliar with Alpine Linux, it's an open-source, security-oriented and freely distributed lightweight Linux-based operating system based on the musl libc library and the widely-used BusyBox collection of command-line utilities. Alpine Linux 3.5.0 is now available for download from our website in multiple editions for various hardware architectures, including 64-bit and 32-bit.