[3] It uses musl, BusyBox, and OpenRC instead of the more commonly used glibc, GNU Core Utilities, and systemd.

[11] Because of its small size and rapid startup, it is commonly used in containers providing quick boot-up times,[12][13] on virtual machines as well as on real hardware in embedded devices, such as routers, servers and NAS.

[20] Alpine still uses a hardened toolchain and position-independent executables to minimize the potential for stack-based attacks,[15] but is now based on the standard long term stable distribution of the Linux kernel.

Alpine's primary feature is its small size, which enables it to start quickly and run in environments very low in memory and storage, such as containers or embedded devices.

[23] Due to its robustness and compactness, Alpine Linux is tightly integrated with popular developer and system administrator environments and toolsets.