Desktop environments and Window managers

The desktop environment in Alpine have two focus: official desktop for alpine as Xfce4 and community contributed desktops as Mate, LXDE or as special case the very bloated Gnome.

The popularity of desktop computers and laptops has been increasing BUT that's a only false behavior.. there's two factors that indicates that:

1. Because Linux desktop distributions are not usually distributed by retail sale, there are no sales numbers that indicate the number of users. Desktop computers and phones are ruled by M$ and Google so far.
2. The main effors are focused in server and many desktops have programs that never find a end in development like Kppp or Firefox OS, or GTKpod; those are projects that works only with deprecated not used in time devices or machines.

Taking in consideration that the North American-based web-measurement methods produce high Win-like desktop OS numbers and ignore the widespread use of Linux in other parts of the world, no single official Linux desktop exists and all the integration are focused in too many RedHat proposed practices (that ends in M$-like things like systemd.

Why all of this explanation?

You as user will find some very significant differences when integrated some desktops or try to install many desktops programs from source upstream, a very important thing to take in consideration. But "Ah ok, but why that? why not a automatic default etc etc..?" well as explained in first section of this page the focus of the system are efficiency, performance and maximum control of the system, not an automatic behavior not well knowed.

As pointed in first paragraph, Gnome it's a example of this.. it's used the wayland service and widely integrated with systemd, and Alpine does not use systemd. That it's a example why Desktop environment are so difficult to adopt in Linux world and obviously to configured in Alpine systems.

Alpine Desktops first steps

Any desktop will need four main components.. the communications subsystem, the graphical service and the input and output devices support:

WIP: commands to install xorg libinput and some discrete related

Alpine Desktops: Official Desktop

There's two official supported desktops, XFCE Desktop Environment as Main and LXDE Desktop as optional, that obviously make also optional the Openbox Window Manager.

1. Alpine Newbies XFCE Desktop Environment
2. Alpine Newbies LXDE Desktop Environment
3. Alpine Newbies Openbox Window Manager

Alpine Desktops: Community Contributions

There's some contributions dekstops made available using the Community Repository Packages, those are not officially supported (those that make contribution are the ones that support those desktops):

1. Alpine Newbies MATE Desktop Environment

Alpine Desktops: Upstream and external ones

All of the original upstream desktop can be installed by the traditional *nix-like method by downloading the sources from origin and compiling it.

1. Alpine Newbies LXQT Desktop Environment