How to get regular stuff working
Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and BusyBox. This makes it small and very resource efficient. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options and hence missing some functionality when used to daily drive. This page explains how to get the regular utilities working as found in other Linux distributions.
Subpackages and missing functionality
In Alpine Linux, binary packages are thinned out and split. New users of Alpine Linux may be surprised by missing functionality due to this splitting of packages into subpackages.
For eg: networkmanager* is split into 20+ subpackages giving you more control over what you install, which in turn keeps your environment as small and efficient as possible. Alpine Linux allows you to install the functionalities that you require, for e.g. Wifi, tui & cli instead of Bluetooth, ADSL, VPN, ppp etc.. and their associated dependencies. Use package database or apk search networkmanager to find necessary subpackages.
Core utilities
Most of the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities commonly grouped under Core Utilities are provided by BusyBox. To replace it with original coreutils package:
# apk add coreutils
Util-linux
A set of approximately 100 basic Linux system utilities not included in GNU Core Utilities, such as mount, cfdisk, more, lsblk and kill are maintained under Util-linux. To have the complete util-linux package:
# apk add util-linux
Search utilities
Standard search tools grep and find can be installed by installing the packages grep and findutils as follows:
Bash shell
The default shell used by Alpine Linux is the busybox variant of the ash shell. To install bash:
# apk add bash bash-completion
Hardware Management
Install pciutils and usbutils for configuring PCI and USB hardware respectively. You can always remove these packages once the hardware is configured.
The packages hwdata-pci and hwdata-usb are dependencies for the above utilities and they are installed automatically.
Disk Management
Managing (removable) disks is much easier with udisks.
# apk add udisks2
To see the mounted disks:
# udisksctl status
Network Management
For network, you may want to install iproute2.
# apk add iproute2
Development environment
Compiling in Alpine may be more challenging because it uses musl-libc instead of glibc. Alpine offers the regular compiler stuff such as gcc.
# apk add gcc
The alpine-sdk meta package is provided to build packages for Alpine. It includes abuild, build-base, and git.
# apk add alpine-sdk
To install CMake:
# apk add cmake extra-cmake-modules
ccache and a lot other tools are also available in Alpine.