If using Alpine Linux 2.2.3 or later

Warning: This will erase everything on your machine's harddisk. Don't blame me if someone sues you for this, your cat dies etc. You are warned.

The following is meant to be an absolute newbie guide

Burn the Alpine ISO image to a CD
Put the CD into the new computer and turn on the power. Make sure the computer is capable to boot from a CD. Your manual for the computer or the BIOS can help.
Wait for the text login: to appear, type root and press enter.
Run the setup-alpine script
- Choose your keyboard layout. If you don't know your keyboard layout choose us. Here us was chosen.
  - Then I chose the us variant.
- Host name, which will be the name of your computer, you can just press enter if you want to use the default name
- Choose your network card, most people can just go with the default (press enter)
  - Most people will use DHCP, so press enter again, or you can enter in your static IP address
  - You will be asked if you want to do any manual network configuration, press enter for no
- Type in your root password twice.
- Choose a time zone, you can get a list by pressing ?. If you want a sub zone, e.g. Africa, type in Africa and press enter, ? will give you a list of sub zones in Africa.
- Press f to choose the fastest mirror.
- Choose an SSH server, this allows you to remotely manage your machine. OpenSSH is what the big distro's use, Dropbear is a tiny SSH replacement. Choose none for best security.
- Choose an NTP client, this keeps your machine's time accurate using an Internet time server. Openntpd is what the big distro's use, while Chrony is a tiny replacement.
- Choose a disk you want to install Alpine onto, as an example, sda is the first disk in your computer.
  - Now choose how you would like to use it, for this guide, choose sys, this will install the entire OS onto your hard drive
  - You are given a final chance to back out, type in Y to continue
The installation is now complete and you will be asked to reboot. Type in reboot and press enter

Take out the CD, and your computer should boot into Alpine using your hard drive.

Continue Setting up your Computer

Alpine Linux package management (How to add/remove packages on your Alpine)
OpenRC (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
Setting up a SSH server (Using ssh is a good way to administer your box remotely)
Tutorials and Howtos (Various tutorials, including how to setup a XFCE desktop)