QEMU is a very flexible open source machine emulator and virtualizer. QEMU is able to virtualize x86, PowerPC, and S390 guests.

Before You Start

First download the latest Alpine CD image.
Install qemu on your system (e.g. yum -y install qemu on a Fedora based system)

Create the Virtual Machine

Create a disk image if you want to install Alpine Linux.

qemu-img create alpine.qcow 8G

The following command starts qemu with the alpine iso image as cdrom and boot device, the default network configuration, 256 MB memory, and the disk image that was created in the previous step.

qemu -cdrom alpine-2.2.1-x86_64.iso -hda alpine.qcow -boot d -net nic -net user -m 256 -localtime

Tip: Replace qemu with qemu-kvm if your hardware support this.

After the installation qemu can be started from disk image (-boot c) without cdrom.

qemu alpine.qcow -boot c -net nic -net user -m 256 -localtime

Live mode

If your just want to give Alpine Linux a try, qemu can be used without a disk image.

qemu -m 512 -cdrom alpine-2.2.1-x86_64.iso