Python projects relying on pkg_resources will break on upgrade to Alpine 3.24.0 — setuptools 82.0.0 finally killed that deprecated module. For years the module lived on life support, but this release pulls the plug: upgrade, and any import pkg_resources raises ModuleNotFoundError. The fix is to switch to importlib.resources or the newer importlib.metadata from the standard library.
COSMIC 1 Lands in Community
System76’s COSMIC desktop environment, built from scratch in Rust, is now available in the community repository. GNOME 50 also ships with this release, KDE Plasma 6.6, and Sway 1.12. Wayland compositors and desktop choice keep expanding, but COSMIC’s debut shows Alpine is keeping pace with the Rust ecosystem.
Installer Gains Limine and IPv6
setup-alpine now supports the Limine boot loader — a modern, x86-64 native boot manager with UEFI and BIOS support. IPv6 configuration is built in, and serial console installs automatically configure the boot loader and kernel for headless servers. That’s a practical win for homelab and datacenter deployments.
Deprecations and Removals
qemu-binfmt service from qemu-openrc is deprecated — switch to binfmt.d config files from user-mode QEMU packages. GTK+ 3.0 moved out of main to community, signaling future packaging shifts. Additional GTK 2 and Qt5 packages were removed, and libsoup 2 is gone. Upgrade notes are explicit: run apk upgrade --available and GRUB users must run grub-install after upgrading to pick up GRUB 2.14.
Key version bumps: LLVM 22, Rust 1.96, Go 1.26, nginx 1.30. Each brings its own compiler optimizations and language features — but the pkg_resources removal is the one that will bite the most Pythonistas. This release sets the stage for further modernization across the v3.24 stable series.
Source: Alpine Linux 3.24.0 Released
Domain: alpinelinux.org
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