Ultra-Light Linux on Windows: Running Alpine on WSL for Speed and Simplicity

From my perspective as a developer and system administrator, utilizing Alpine Linux on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) offers a number of compelling advantages. The first and most obvious advantage is its very small footprint; the base image of Alpine is about 5 MB, a minimalist's dream. This extreme lightness translates directly into tangible benefits: WSL entities start up much faster and consume very little RAM. In my experience, starting an Alpine WSL instance is almost instantaneous.

How to Install Alpine on WSL

We’ll use AlpineWSL project to setup quickly.

Step 1. Download Alpine.zip fromAlpineWSL github releases.

Step 2. Extract the downloaded zip and run Alpine.exe.

Running this will automatically register this Alpine WSL instance.

Step 3. Verify a new WSL instance is registered. Use wsl.exe —list —all to list all installed distros.

You can see Alpine is set as default. In case, you have multiple WSL instance setup, you might have another distro set as default.

Step 4. Launch. In my case, Alpine is default WSL instance, so I can launch it simply via wsl.exe command.

In case of multiple instances, you can launch Alpine instance specifically via:

wsl.exe -d Alpine

Bonus: How to install packages in Alpine

Alpine linux uses apk instead of apt for package management. Here’s a quick cheatsheet on how to use apk.

Install a package:

apk add raylib

Remove a program:

apk del raylib

Search for a package:

apk search raylib

In case you need description for the package as well, add -v as well:

apk search -v raylib

Give Alpine Linux on WSL a try today and supercharge your Windows development workflow! Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below – we'd love to hear how Alpine transforms your setup!