I've used alpine and can confirm, it's pretty fun and efficient.
I've even been thinking of trying to setup a super small work environment on it, a full Wayland desktop daily driver, like, using labwc, lxqt, foot terminal and Emacs making it into a terminal first workplace with the ability to exploit it's computing efficiency to make use of the modern stack in stuff like web browsing when the terminal tooling doesn't cut it.
My computer can run everything pretty well already, but a terminal first environment is the perfect training for me to get used to my new split keyboard layout, while also being a perfect excuse to go all in on my programming hobby by setting everything up in a container like environment such as alpine, additionally, the minimalism larp appeals a lot to me, it just feels right.
They could, but the HDMI forum just had a recent history with not allowing even AMD to make their hdmi 2.1 compliant drivers open source, so progress on open drivers efforts across the entire open source community slowed down almost to a halt due fear of critical open projects being sued due to patent infringement and copyright.
Refer to the news: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/hdmi-forum-rejects-amds-hdmi-21-open-source-driver
The history of Linux hardware incompatibility is paved by hardware and software monopolies holding the line via legal/economic interference, lobbying and malicious compliance such as the infamous: Embrace, extended and extinguish.
Refer to the history:
Embrace, extend and extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Widespread efforts by Microsoft and at&t to smother the image of open source legal stability by patent trolling:
BSD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc.
Linux: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-ballmer-steps-up-linux-infringement-suit-rhetoric/
Summaries of the situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_software
As seen above, these sort of interventions are nothing new, standard desktop Linux could not only be theoretically capable of doing many of the things it currently can't, it already does those things in: closed, out of Linux kernel tree repositories that companies refuse to open source and merge into the main kernel due a protectionist stance on artificial scarcity and upholding of existing monopolies.
Refer to infamous Linus middle finger to nvidia: https://www.techspot.com/news/49025-torvalds-blasts-nvidia-over-linux-support-gives-them-the-middle-finger-during-speech.html
If a massive company like nvidia is like this, imagine the thousands of hardware companies out there, with varying levels of competency and "ethics", now put into perspective how low the bar is for profit first companies, ie. All of them is set, where would your DAC manufacturer stand exactly between them? How many inches above the crust of the seventh layer of hell, exactly?
Post like these sting because people have no ideia just how much effort it takes to make Linux work in spite of the unwillingness of hardware companies, which are not only awful, have been awful, they are also getting exponentially more awful by the dollar. The future of open general computing is grim, man, we're in the trenches with AI slop now even.
Sorry for the rant, but I felt compelled to, please be reasonable given the circumstances. Again, my bad.