zlacker

Why prevent closed source software from running in userspace? Even in Fedora Linux I find myself having to use closed source software a lot for daily tasks.

>>_chu1+(OP)
That just happens to be a side-effect of using Alpine as base distribution. If you really need something closed source it's still very easy to just use a flatpak for that.

>>_chu1+(OP)
It's not intentional, just a side effect of using musl libc instead of glibc (GNU C library).

Some distros, such as alpine Linux, use musl libc as their system wide C library.

glibc is pretty much ubiquitous, so any closed source software will be compiled against glibc and will not work with musl c libraries.

That's not to say a vendor couldn't do a muslc build of a closed source software, just that it's pretty much unheard of.

I believe binary compatibility is a goal of musl, being able to run a glibc binary against a musl libc library, but I think that's a long way off.

So an alternative on a musl libc distro is to use something like flatpak that bundles glibc libraries in a sandbox / container.

The side effect the grandparent comment is referring to, is that you have a good idea all the software on your system is open source, other than what you are running in flatpak, as closed source binaries are unlikely to run on your musl system.

>>jcul+h4
> glibc is pretty much ubiquitous, so any closed source software will be compiled against glibc and will not work with musl c libraries.

> That's not to say a vendor couldn't do a muslc build of a closed source software, just that it's pretty much unheard of.

The ironic thing is that musl makes it easier to do static binaries, so in a world where glibc wasn't older I would have expected to see more proprietary software compiled against musl (albeit, statically linked so that it didn't really matter).