Alpine, a lightweight, musl-based and systemd-free (OpenRC is the default init system) Linux distribution, has just released version 3.23 as the distro moves to the brand-new Linux kernel 6.18, which was promoted to an LTS release today.
Core developer tools receive major upgrades, including GCC 15, LLVM 21, Go 1.25, Rust 1.91, PHP 8.5, and PostgreSQL 18. The release also updates a long list of user-facing components, including GNOME 49, KDE Plasma 6.5.3, LXQt 2.3, Sway 1.11, and Qt 6.10.
Another highlight is that this version introduces APK-Tools v3. The new package manager version is designed to be a seamless in-place upgrade for most users, retaining the v2 package format while preparing the system for future changes.
Awesome to see APK 3 finally ship. I have been using it on Chimera Linux for a couple years and love it.