Alpine’s default more and less both are symlinks to busybox.
more is POSIX.
The busybox implementation is similar but doesn’t match exact (nor do they claim it does).
LINES=4 more /etc/passwd
This less seems to behave like more, except
It doesn’t exit when the end of file is reached (i.e, it behaves like more
-e).
It redraws the entire screen even if the file is shorter than a screenful.
Busybox is eminently usable. The good thing about busybox, beyond the minimalism, is that it ensures that I don’t get in the rabbit hole of using too custom a option that won’t work anywhere else (Docker images, darwin, SSHed boxes).
However, taking more as an example – having a pager that’s functionally minimal
is fine but not great for a daily use workstation. e.g., git diff doesn’t show
colors.
This is similar to the reasoning for moving on from the default shell, and also a conclusion I reached when trying to get man pages for the applets that come with busybox.
coreutils does the (reverse) swap of busybox for its equivalents that are common for interactive use.