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 community repository 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.