Daily driver guide
Many people think that Alpine is only made for containers and servers, but it is actually a general purpose distro which can definitely be used as a daily driver.
Alpine is extremely small, simple and resource-efficient, making it easy to customize.
Note: This guide assumes you have already installed a minimal Alpine system by following the Installation guide
Basics
- Create a non-privileged user account for security reasons.
- Learn the alpine package keeper basics or refer apk wiki for more details.
- Ensure that
communityrepository is enabled - Install graphics driver for your video hardware.
- Choose Quickstart Install or manual installation of a desktop environment of your choice.
- Install some fonts.
- Setup PipeWire to manage your audio, if setup-desktop did not install it for your already or you installed your desktop environment manually.
- Configure your Bluetooth, if you have one. Also check pipewire bluetooth, if needed.
- Configure your printer.
- Enable docs, so man pages are available.
Advanced
- If you find busybox lacking in features or options, it is easy to get regular stuff working
- Use Flatpak to add packages that are not in the repositories.
- Install gcompat package to add a glibc compatability layer which (sometimes) lets you run binaries as normal.
- Secure your system by installing firewall software like awall or UFW.
- Install a sandboxing application like AppArmor or Bubblewrap.
- Learn basics of openrc, the alpine Linux init system or refer Open rc wiki
Experimental
Warning: Only do below steps, if you're 100% sure what you're doing! Possible bugs in edge and testing could cause data loss or could break your system.
- If You may want the rolling release version of Alpine Linux, enable the Edge repository.
- You may want to enable the testing repository, as it provides a lot more applications.
Read the above warning once again and understand the full implications.