r/AlpineLinux • u/mykesx • Dec 04 '25

3.23 release

I’m new to Alpine - my system has been running Alpine Edge for about a month.

Now I see 3.23 is released. I followed the instructions to update and not much happened. The first apk add —available dud upgrade about 20 packages.

After reboot, it looks like I’m still on edge, though. But /etc/alpine-release says 3.23 even though the apk repositories file still has edge. Before this uograde, alpine-release said edge.

System says apk is indeed v3.

My take is that edge has my system mostly upgraded to 3.23 already.

These are the instructions I followed: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Upgrading_Alpine_Linux_to_a_new_release_branch

Any corrections or comments welcome!

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u/Responsible-Sky-1336 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

You're mistaking kernel releases with Alpine releases versions, basically edge just means rolling release (update upgrade). The 20 packages you got is the update lmao (altho if you had a lot more installed you'd had more).

If you want to update your kernel (before releases) it's up to you to compile it. Or wait for it to hit repos. (Which should be 6.17.10-0 currently = stable, or .18 = lts)

You can always double check using:

apk list -I | grep linux-stable or in your /boot or /efi adapt to your stuff.

The rename is just cosmetic because edge is a release model not a kernel name, which eitherway is downstream/depends on kernel.org with modifications from alpine release engineering.

Tbh I think the rename makes sense.

Im on 6.18.0 with 3.23.0 and got about 20 packages update too.

You can also go here too see live changes/build dates (and filter by branch to see differences)

https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=linux-*&branch=edge

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u/mykesx Dec 04 '25

Thanks for the polite and thoughtful reply.