I never read anywhere that it was designed for desktop, but they've always included the packages. Firefox was pretty much the only browser available and was unusable for years because of some math issues with font rendering if I remember correctly. ( I have attempted to daily drive it from time to time). In this regards it's pretty obvious Void Linux is more desktop focused.
Alpine is supposed to be a small, stable and secure general purpose base.
Alpine is supposed to be a small, stable and secure general purpose base.