For years, Equinix Metal provided Alpine Linux with essential support, enabling the project to offer reliable, secure, and efficient software to users around the globe. However, with this critical backing ending, Alpine now faces the challenge of finding suitable replacements for its key infrastructure.
To continue providing Alpine Linux as a reliable, secure, and efficient operating system, we need your help. If you or your organization can assist with hosting resources or financial contributions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
What must be replaced? Equinix Metal has been hosting three of Alpine’s storage services that power the T1 mirroring infrastructure, which is instrumental in delivering fast and reliable downloads worldwide through the dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org domain.
Moreover, Equinix Metal has supplied two servers for CI runners supporting x86_64 and x86 architectures and a dedicated development box for Alpine Linux contributors. So, everything mentioned so far needs a replacement.
In light of this, the Alpine Linux team is actively looking for colocation space near the Netherlands. This proximity will make it much easier for volunteers to install, service, and maintain the servers.
Given the high-performance requirements—especially for mirroring services—bare-metal servers are a top priority. The project needs machines that can handle T1 mirror infrastructure demands (approximately 800TB of bandwidth per month) and support CI workloads for x86_64 and x86 architectures.
However, if bare-metal servers aren’t an option, virtual machines with suitable storage, computing power, and network capacity could fill the gap, particularly for development and CI tasks.
Of course, hosting is only one piece of the puzzle. Whether we like it or not, the truth is that sustaining an open-source project of Alpine’s scale also requires reliable funding. Fortunately, as we informed you very recently, the distro is now on Open Collective, so community members and organizations can make direct financial contributions.
For more information, see Alpine’s official announcement. If you or your organization can assist, contact the team at [email protected].
But before I wrap up, here’s something interesting. Call it a coincidence or not, but today, another major player in the Linux ecosystem—Flathub—made a similar announcement. And as it turns out, they also rely on Equinix Metal’s services.
However, their situation is slightly different—described as the perfect storm. Unlike the other case, their announcement doesn’t include a request for help securing infrastructure to keep things running.
However, it mentions that Flathub has less than three months (until the end of April) to rebuild its entire build infrastructure from scratch. And judging by the technical details, that will be anything but easy.
As always, we’ll closely monitor the situation and keep you updated as things develop.
