What is Kalipso Linux?

Basically, it's Alpine Linux as a daily driver. The Alpine Linux website states: "Alpine Linux is an independent, non-commercial, general purpose Linux distribution designed for power users who appreciate security, simplicity and resource efficiency." It's small, Simple and Secure. Generally it's mostly used for routers and other little boxes that don't have a lot of RAM and Diskspace. And because Alpine is very small, it can run entirely from RAM. Small, Simple and Secure makes it absolutely perfect as a desktop OS. 

My journey so far:

For me personally Simple and Secure are what got me addicted to Alpine Linux. Having been a Linux user since 1996, ive seen them all. Debian has been my go to Desktop and Server OS for ages. But compared to Alpine, Debian is big and bloated. It's very stable but for me it can't compare to Alpine's Simple, Secure and Small.

Since a few months i've also been migrating my server's to Alpine. While i don't consider it business ready yet, i've replaced my homelab Proxmox server with Alpine using QEMU and Virt-Manager. Business wise i started with replacing Debian/NGiNX with Alpine/Caddy. Then i started moving some software into docker containers.. Low and behold, Alpine runs docker too! Currently 75% of our servers run Alpine, the remaining servers only run Debian because the software isn't dockerized or because of some other special circumstances.

Privately i've been exploring Alpine as a desktop OS. It took some research, tinkering, trial and error but i'm very happy with the results so far. 

So why Kalipso Linux?

We all heard the "this is the year for Linux on the desktop" But thats not gonna happen the next few years. But my friends and family are getting more and more interested in Linux, because you hear about it everywhere. And thanks to Microsoft with their Microsoft Account & Hardware requirements, more and more people are looking to Linux. Kalipso Linux is my attempt at making Alpine Linux a daily driver for others too. 

The name is based on KDE and Alpine (KA). Other then that there are no specific reasons. 

~ Johannes