Alpine Linux are already installed in your media dumped, it means downloadble media files of Alpine Linux are already the system ready to use directly from the media where are dumped!

Quick Requirements

This is a simple and quick reference list, nowadays any hardware is supported for Alpine Linux:

At least 128 MEgs of RAM for server without graphical GUI, or at least 1.6 Gigs for graphical desktop
At least 2 Gigs storage device for server without graphical GUI, or at least 20 Gigs for graphical desktop with web browsing

Highly recommended for more details or if you do not have great knowledge must to read wiki page for requirements: Requirements!

Installation Overview

It must be clear that alpine linux each image source media (whatever you download).. is the system already executable and ready to use, and what is understood as "installing" in reality is to be able to have the installation root on another storage media and make it bootable by the device that handles it.

Download the media source

Just grab from stable-release ISO image, for your computer's architecture, use the "architecture" name in each green button of download page.

Most common case just download x86 or x86_64 types.. for further information check Architectures section and then Media Downloadable section of requirements wiki page.

Optionally you can perform a sha256 checksum as described in Checksum section of Requirements wiki page but is not necessary in general cases.

Dump, burn or flash the image

Depending of your hardware, now can dump the ISO image onto a media source like USB/SD flashing; or CD/DVD/BR disk with burning software.

But you could check Ways_to_install_Alpine_listed_by_architectures wiki page if you have special cases like ARM or s390 machines.

Boot and install process

The boot process first copies the entire system into the RAM memory, and then runs it completely from RAM, so that the started command line environment does not depend on reading from the (slow) initial boot media anymore.

Log-in as the user root with its initially empty password. So there's no need to ask for password at first boot.

Then execute the script called setup-alpine, can be used to configure the initial Alpine Linux system, next section will explain each question.

`setup-alpine` install program

The setup-alpine script offers to configure, here you can perform that questions and hit enter on each answer:

1. Keyboard map: Let you to perform the keyborad layout, this is really two cuestions:
- The first ante the general map: e.g. us or es
- And second the variant of e.g. us-nodeadkeys or es-winkeys respectively
2. Hostname this is the name of computer, mostly knowed as the human name, in Linux this are default to "localhost" if not configured.
3 Network (e.g. automatic DHCP IP address discovery)
DNS Servers
Timezone
Proxy ("None" for direct connections to the internet.)
SSH (Openssh is part of the default images.)
NTP (Chrony is part of the default images.)
Runtime Mode (Select between "diskless" (disk=none), "data" or "sys")

WIP

Additional Details

However... as mentioned, even though it is not installed on your device it is working as if it were, all the setup-scripts inclusively the apk package manager are available to direct use, and all the general command line tools of course to install further packages. All of this are from the media you boot, this mode is called "diskless mode", for further information check Setup_modes section for "alpine running modes".

CLARIFICATIONS about media sources: What is understood as "installing" in reality is to be able to have this installation root on another storage media and make it bootable by the device that handles it. All the media Alpine images are already Alpine running live systems, check

This material needs expanding ...

This "Additional Details" section needs to be consolidated with the work at https://docs.alpinelinux.org (not finished) (Restructuring things there, moving and linking from here or there?).

Rebooting and testing the new system

After the installation is completed, the system may be power-cycled or rebooted to confirm that everything is working. If the configured runtime mode was "sys", then remove the initial installation media to boot the newly installed system.

The relevant commands for this are reboot or poweroff.

Further Documentation

Installing

Directly booting an ISO file (without flashing it to a disk or device)
Setting up Networking (incl. non-standard configurations)

Post-Install

Setting up a new user

Enable Community Repository (Providing additional packages)
Package Management (apk) (general search/add/del packages etc.)
setup-xorg-base (display graphics, if required)
- Xfce_Setup / Desktop-notes / Xfce_Desktop

Local backup utility lbu (persisting RAM system configurations)
- Back Up a Flash Memory Installation ("diskless mode" systems)
- Manually_editing_a_existing_apkovl (the stored custom configs)
Init System (OpenRC) (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
- Multiple Instances of Services
- Writing Init Scripts

Hosting services on Alpine (Links to several mail/web/ssh server setup pages)
Runnig programs and services in their own Firejail Security Sandbox

Upgrading Alpine (checking for and installing updates)
How_to_make_a_custom_ISO_image_with_mkimage

Further Help and Information

Running glibc programs (Installation and development)

How to Contribute
Developer Documentation
Wiki etiquette to collaborate on this documentation

Tip: Alpine linux packages stay close to the upstream design. Therefore, all upstream documentation about configuring a software package, as well as good configuration guides from other distributions that stay close to upstream, like e.g. in the Arch Wiki, are to a large degree also well applicable to configure the software on alpine linux, thus can be very useful.