A fresh release of the minimalist and very lightweight Alpine Linux is here, with support for Chinese LoongArch64 CPUs.
As usual for Alpine Linux, 3.21 follows closely upon the release of a new LTS kernel version. Kernel 6.12 was declared the new LTS on December 5, and this version of Alpine was announced the same day (see the bootnote for more information).
Alpine 3.21 has a raft of other updates along with the kernel: updated development tools including .NET 9, and new desktops including KDE Plasma 6.2, LXQt 2.1, and GNOME 47 (although gnome-software has been held back due to issues in handling Alpine’s apk packaging format).
In 2021, Alpine 3.15 dropped MIPS64 support, but since then it’s been adding new CPU architectures instead. The version before this one, Alpine 3.20, added RISC-V back in May.
Now, it gains another: the quite MIPS-like Chinese Loongson, which is now available in ultra-small-form-factor mini PCs and is even running in space. Although China now has its own Shanghai Zhaoxin x86 processors – there’s even a Lenovo ThinkPad based on them – it seems to us that this sort of investment bodes well for the Loongson architecture.
