Alpine Linux 3.15 Release Highlights, Significant Changes, and Deprecation Notes
Alpine Linux 3.15 introduces disk‑encryption support, UEFI Secure Boot, updated kernels and packages, several significant changes such as gzip‑compressed kernel modules and removed MIPS64 support, and deprecates tools like sudo in favor of doas while warning about the upcoming end‑of‑life for php7.
Alpine Linux is a security‑focused lightweight Linux distribution designed for x86 routers, firewalls, VPNs, IP‑phone boxes, and servers, using musl libc and busybox to reduce size and runtime resource consumption, and providing its own apk package manager.
Alpine Linux 3.15 update includes the following highlights:
HIGHLIGHTS
Support for disk encryption in the installer
Out‑of‑tree kernel module support via AKMS
Preliminary UEFI Secure Boot support on x86_64
Linux Kernel 5.15 (LTS)
LLVM 12
Node.js 16.13 (LTS) / nodejs‑current 17.0
PostgreSQL 14
OpenLDAP 2.6
Ruby 3.0
Rust 1.56
OpenJDK 17
Kea 2.0
Xorg‑server 21.1
GNOME 41
KDE Plasma 5.23 / KDE Applications 21.08 / Plasma Mobile Gear 21.10
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES
Kernel modules are now compressed with gzip
The framebuffer driver in the kernel has been disabled and replaced by simpledrm
qt5‑qtwebkit and related packages have been removed due to upstream support loss
MIPS64 port has been discontinued and will receive no further releases
DEPRECATION NOTES
sudo will be moved to the community repository in Alpine Linux 3.16; it is recommended to replace it with doas , which remains in main.
php7 is being phased out; version 7.4 will receive only one more year of security support.
Laravel Tech Community
Specializing in Laravel development, we continuously publish fresh content and grow alongside the elegant, stable Laravel framework.
How this landed with the community
Was this worth your time?
0 Comments
Thoughtful readers leave field notes, pushback, and hard-won operational detail here.