Re: glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Chris Brannon <ch...@the-brannons.com>]

Stefan Mühlinghaus <master...@googlemail.com> writes:

> I would be interested in that as well. Is there any tangible benefit
> in using the musl libc except having the warm fuzzies from using the
> leaner technology? :)
> I hesitate to switch to musl for fear of running into
> incompatibilities, but that could just be my superstitious self.

Well, I'm probably not the best advocate, but here goes.
The reason I took an interest in musl is that it is very friendly to
static linking, and on occasion, I really want to be able to statically
link things!  The code is also quite readable.
I run Void with musl on my Raspberry Pi, and yes, the "warm fuzzies from
using the leaner technology" are nice.
Finally, part of me just really dislikes monoculture, and having an
alternative libc appeals to that sensibility.
I'm sure someone can come up with better reasons.
That being said, I doubt most users care much about libc
implementations.

If you're running proprietary binaries of some sort, they're probably
linked against glibc, so they won't run out of the box on a system where
musl is the standard library.  That isn't an issue for me on my
Raspberry Pi.  There are still some open source packages that won't
build with it.  The released versions of emacs are a good example.  If
you want to build emacs against musl, you have to use sources from git
and apply patches that have been submitted to Alpine.

Hope this helps,
-- Chris