Alpine Linux: The First Installation

In this video, I am going to install Alpine Linux for the first time with the XFCE desktop environment. Alpine Linux uses the Openrc init system.
Alpine Linux: alpinelinux.org/
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_...
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My Hardware:
AMD Ryzen 9
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Distro: Arch Linux
Video editing software: Kdenlive
Website: eflinux.com
Twitter: / ermanno_ferrari
Gitlab: gitlab.com/eflinux
#linuxmadesimple

[@z3r0mus]

Thanks for walk us through the installation, Ermanno.👍👍

[@benarcher372]

Interesting. Alpine seems to be a good lightweight alternative. Will follow this for sure! Thanks again Ermanno for all your contributions to the GNU/Linux community.

[@keyboard_g]

Thanks for the video. Well done. Would love to see more of Alpine.

[@onoff5604]

Thank you so much for the wonderful video. I had been hoping to install Alpine for now about 10 years (since ~2012) and after seeing how easily you navigated setup and your excellent recommendations and clear explanations, I got a refurbished ASUS laptop and just a few minutes out of the box it now has Alpine (cryptsys) and XFCE running! Amazing.

[@afterlife7265]

Thank you!!I'm interested in Alpine Linux.. was looking forward for videos!!thank you so much

[@crazyaccess]

This is actually a good initiative to demonstrate the wide range of distributions, and the alpine's use of openrc is good as it exposes the linux community to not think systemd is the only integrated linux init system. Appreciate the work.

[@RHTORAS]

@Some Kind Of Master void also has musl as an option and also gentoo has musl and openrc as options too... no systemD community is growing stronger day to day...

[@user-gp8ub8vh7i]

Ermanno, Excellent video as usual. And you look healthy! I am glad.

[@tiitulitii]

This was just the right time for me. Thanks!

[@MichealG]

🙏 Thank you. Wish you the best. And waiting for this series about alpine

[@mavricksands]

Great and comprehensive video. Used to install on virt-manager

[@taidee]

This I like 😎, this is a very nice and light system, thank you master Ermanno.

[@testtest-xz6ec]

Creating a bootable complete operating system on an usb stick (support for different CPUs, not so much available storage) with alpine would be nice to be covered.

[@akihokokurosaki]

I did this with arch linux

[@dreamok732]

About 8 years ago I installed alpine Linux on an old laptop and loved the release so much it is now my default Linux choice. What I particularly like is that Alpine installs very minimaly and then you can add whatever you want (and leave out everything else). I`ve been running Linux since early Slackware releases and the Alpine developers have created a Linux how _I_ think it ought to be. OK I am not a typical user. Who is? Alpine is also very suitable as the base for containers. It works really well in that environment too.

[@killertigergaming6762]

@Kiryu Kazuma funnily enough i tried slackware and alpine around the same time but slackware kept giving me certificate errors on there mirrors

[@Chinaguy5216]

Thanks for this one Ermanno. One question could you share your opinion on using Alpine as home server os ?

[@samerabouassi2417]

Hi Ermanno I wish you good luck in the new place, I've recently installed alpine with xfce it's good but I didn't know how to mount my usb

[@DanelonNicolas]

Wonderful! thanks for share

[@grubbermeister]

Love Alpine. Works great with my ancient Toshiba Satellite.

[@Lorenzo99Zini]

Thank you so much! This is the piece of information I needed! :D

[@davidhailstone7794]

I would like to install on an old Toshiba satellite but the BIOS won't allow boot up from a flash drive, which is annoying.

[@jesse7631]

Excellent video as always Ermanno. So, if you're installing this on a machine which has a UEFI boot partition on a disk different from the one you're installing Alpine on, is there the option to do that, if it detects that your boot/efi partition exists on a different disk / partition?

[@act.13.41]

I can't get over how fast Alpine feels.

[@jesse7631]

I would love to see this walk-through with GNOME installed, if possible. Thank you Ermanno!

[@swarooprajpurohit110]

Wouldn't it make it a non-systemd distro?

[@sergebuable]

@@swarooprajpurohit110 gnome on gentoo with openrc works

[@RHTORAS]

@@sergebuable but systemD components exist... and i am non systemD user here... Gnome can work nosystemD and bsd but i wouldn't suggest it... and i do not have major problems using elogind mind you!

[@bhadawang]

Thank You, Sir

[@momomaniac1234]

Alpine Linux has flatpaks and has awesome window manager and dwm if i'm not mistaken i personally tried alpine with awesome wm it was very good experience Alpine too has kde plasma

[@joergbiedermann4534]

hope see more of Alpine ;-)

[@rezamohammadi2494]

Thank you so much

[@globetrotterdk]

Many thanks for an informative video about a Linux distribution that I really want to try. Keeping with the lightweight theme of Alpine, I would like to install the Calm (CWM) window manager. Having looked at the Alpine information, it doesn’t appear to be available. I have searched GitHub for CWM and found two gits. I am kind of confused about this and could use some instructions for getting CWM installed on Alpine… Perhaps a video?

[@PerfMonk]

Thank Mr Errmano for that nice tutorial. Would you show us how to install other graphical desktop (KDE) or different disk setup like encryption/btrfs as root disk. I find Alpine linux a very interesting alternative to Gentoo/Funtoo since I'm getting tired of compiling everything. Your videos are very interesting.

[@catchnkill]

You may try Artix. It is Arch based distro but does not use systemd. With Arch, you do not need to compile anything. Unless your software is not available from any repo, you compile and install via AUR.

[@Taernsietr]

I actually want to try building a system from Alpine for my mother's aging Intel i3-based laptop, and I'm afraid I'm not experienced enough in Linux to do that. But this video is just the kind of stepping stone I've been looking for :). Excellent content and delivery as always!

[@deViant14]

You're better off with something like BunsenLabs. Alpine is almost router firmware sized os

[@sergiuoanes4635]

love this! any plans to setup a fuly functional tiling WM on Alpine? (i3, qtile)

[@heatherhartwig8247]

How would you go about dual booting this with another OS that is already installed? I have Zorin OS but it doesn't run as well as I'd like it to on my old Acer netbook.

[@joir2000]

Small and fast! Nice OS.

[@betcald-teach]

excellent video. I installed on a virtual machine and it works. sorry what is the visual packages manager? I tryed to install synaptic but I can not find it.

[@jcsuarez73]

Hi, great video. I did most of what you did but in Windows WSL with Alpine, I downloaded XFCE4 and XRDP services, but I couldn't connect with a remote desktop from windows to Alpine

[@rashedmollick2168]

It's just great... Sir how can I install a specific partition or like dual boot ? And can I install any applications like Google Chrome, vlc, pycharm, visual studio code ?

[@josephgolding6985]

I went through full installation but after rebooting when installing desktop packages i just get a blinking underscore in the top left with a black screen. Any guess as to what i fucked up?

[@Pontie66]

Hello! I tried to install it on a virtual machine (hyper-v) but failed, it is not holding the configuration every time the machine is rebooted it loses all configuration, and prompts all again the setup-alpine.

[@LudoBeckers]

I used the extended version iso, followed your instructions, but ended up unsuccessfully without lightdm splash and no xfce, just the openrc boot and then a black screen😕

[@ste1ee]

Hey I really need help, I did everything EXEACLY the same and after I reboot it just doesnt start the display manager, no errors or anything.

[@Ajay-pf6bv]

The last time I tried to install Alpine, I didn't manage to get German language packs. Is this in general possible?

[@petefausone2839]

So I can always install Alpine as shown to a VM but the same exact process never works to a physical HD.

[@Toksicboy]

still a great intro to Alpine

[@JLJourney1]

Hello, Sir. First of all thank you for this. I'm having an issue. The Grub Loader is not working. I have Ubuntu + Windows 11. I believe the problem is that Ubuntu cannot be loaded due to partitions, and always the Grub GUI is showing. Can you please help me?:( ?

[@celestialbeing4767]

Question isn't Alpine a devops distro or any distro can be?

[@samerabouassi2417]

One more question Ermanno how to connect wifi in debian standard

[@aboothahiru6354]

8:49 it is installing very quickly seems not downloading any package from servers ,but in my case it is downloading packages (almost 500mb used in between processes ) I am installing alpine linux x86_64 image on vda using qemu on a x86_64 machine ,...why in my case it uses internet to download packages ?

[@LordPsychocutioner]

So you can get this on an SD Card Easily right? In that case I'll do whatever is saying and get rid of TinyCore and get this on instead.

[@adit_langit]

could I installed open box as my default DE instead of xfce ?

[@mustafababdullah2485]

I'm wondering why few ever mention how easier it is to install iwd if you have WiFi , it is on the same line same sentence in wiki about connection with wpa_supplicant or iwd. And having iwd for such a period of time all know how to turn iwctl on which is the command to turn iwd on

[@thebasketofgoods9753]

Hey Ermanno! Thank you for creating content that is highly informal, easy to follow and overall helpful. I have a bit of a big request of sorts I want to optimize my PCs arch setup, and I have a large list of things I want to learn. I was wondering if you would be willing to look over and consider making additional content and tutorials relating to these things. Some of them are about basic things, but overall it varies. Here is the list of what I wish to better understand before proceeding with my new setup: - Partitions I am somewhat familiar with how these work; one only requires two partitions for a functioning arch system (/boot and /), but I see others use additional partitions like /home, have seen some others like /root, /var and /data, as well as having a swap partition/file if desired. I'm mostly curious about /root and /home. I heard that having a /home partition allows users to reinstall arch without having to clear out data stored within the /home partition. How is that? And does /root, /var and /data (etc) serve a helpful use as a partition? Are there other useful partitions? And for each partition, what file system and size would you recommend they have, and where would they mount? - Networking I often utilize DHCPCD in my installs without really delving into network settings. Am I missing out on things I should be doing regarding my networking? If so, what do you advise I do, and why? Additionally, how would one deny an application Internet Access, and can you specify whether those restrictions only affect if it's receiving information vs sending, or does it have to be both? - Drive Encryption I've been curious about using a type of encryption called "Encrypted Boot Partition (GRUB)" (Found here: wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#Encrypted_boot_partition_(GRUB) ), which claims to be able to go as far as encrypting the boot partition itself. This sounds like a secure way to encrypt ones drive, but if you know of an even more secure encryption, I am interested to hear. Additionally, would it be possible to encrypt multiple drives during and/or after setup? And is it possible to only require a single key operation to unlock every drive/partition? - AppArmor I remember watching a number of videos on this topic, including some of yours. The one thing I could not grasp is how it is utilized after installation. What does AppArmor do exactly, and how do you configure and modify what it does after installation? What does it look like to do so? I've also heard that having AppArmor protects against Keylogging, is this a fact? If so, how? - Sandboxing What is a Sandbox, and what is their uses? I heard it can be used to safely test for malicious files, but how does one utilize sandboxes? What are its pro's and con's compared to using Virtual Machines for that purpose? Can it trick those peskier files into thinking that they're in a native environment when they would refuse to work otherwise? If not, how would one emulate this optimal environment safely? - Virus Testing Speaking of the above, what are some safe but effective ways of checking files for malice? How can one protect themselves against, detect (and so on) malware? - Remote Threat Protection How do you protect against / detect RCE/RATs, and how would you get rid of them? - VPN's How would you recommend going about utilizing VPN's for the maximum amount of privacy available? I've watched a couple videos on it that say hosting your own VPN on a KVM server is a good way to ensure privacy. What is your knowledge regarding this method, as well as others? Would you recommend tor alongside any of this, or is that its own thing separate from VPN usage? - Other Protections What are other ways I can help ensure a protected system against viruses or attacks? - Extra What are some Quality of Life applications that you like to use during casual PC operation (Anything as simple as a calculator to something you find largely convenient =D)? I apologize if you've gone over some of these already. If that is the case, please link me to the relevant videos. And if you aren't certain of some of these items, I understand as well. I understand if you don't have the availability to answer all of these inquiries, so do not feel pressured into doing any of this if it is not within your current ability to do. Thank you for reading, and I appreciate any feedback you have. Have a great day!

[@hehehepaitachato9184]

Im not ermanno but i might help you! for the partition scheme, think that each partition is an isolated box. if you have your system installed in a box (the / partition) and you personal files in another box (/home partition), if you want to nuke your system box, your files box will be intact. Soo, you could install anything in there (even windows!) and fit them together again (mounting the partition). For this purpose, they are different disks. for the network, ive never done anything beyond the default, but AFAIK, that should be only needed when you are trying to setup a server or something like this. To block internet access from some source, you can use some firewall, ufw or firewalld are the ones ive used. for the encryption, sorry, never done that. arch wiki may help you with that, there are a lot of stuff about encryption. never heard about apparmor for the sandboxing, it is just a way to isolate some application. never dove too deep on this. for the virus testing, there are some antiviruses available for linux. ive already used one that the logo remembered me the bsd demon, but it never really detected any threat, so i quit using it. for the remote proctection, never done anything about that. ive been just trying to not be stupid. for the vpns, in the country i live they are totally unnecessary, unless you are trying to do really strange and ilegal stuff for the other protections, maybe using a hardened kernel could help you? cant really assure that for the extras, i like to use tiling window managers, like dwm, i3, sway, etc. they can be a bit strange at the beginning, but as soon as you are habituated with it, you will never want other think

[@taoli5497]

👍

[@unknownuser2296]

I liked

[@whoisYoges]

I recently switched to artix from arch (systemd to runit). The proble is I couldn't hide the boot log message 17:15 - 17:34 ; In arch (systemd), adding GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet loglevel=0" to grub config use to work but it didn't work for me in artix (runit). I found a solution adding GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty12" adding to grub config, but it doesn't hide the message but just sends the log to another tty. So is there a better way for this? Thanks

[@user-gp8ub8vh7i]

quiet console=tty2 (added at the end of the line starting with linux. And don't forget to update the grub). As an additional benefit you will notice a shorter logout/poweroff time

[@momomaniac1234]

Sir i would like to request that awesome wm will be installed in alpine in your next video about alpine linux i honestly want to see awesome wm in your channel

[@dnkreative]

doas does not work for me. What could be wrong?

[@davidcooltions4523]

I'm not having luck installing the XFCE/Xorg gui on Hyper-V. Checking the Xorg.0 logs, I get: failed to load fbdev, failed to load 'vesa' could not open module screen 0 deleted because of mo matching config section. I'm just stuck on a blank flashing cursor until I hit alt+F1. I tried calling setup-desktop prior with xfce, so maybe that muddled something. Gnome worked.

[@davidcooltions4523]

Solved it. Had to manually write a xorg.conf under/etc/X11/

[@toajames1]

@@davidcooltions4523 Can you post the config file you made?

[@emadarabi4549]

would you please configure snmp in alpine linux

[@peimanenato]

it uses busybox but gnu grub?

[@crying_wolfe]

The installation made me question that "Why I exist"

[@nobo6687]

How to install on hdd but then boot to ram ? In multi boot with Ubuntu, Please do a video 🥹

[@b.himanishrajan9997]

Please do an installation with DWM and make it as an DE with necessary tools sir

[@Ben-pr4yd]

Why didn't you just use the alpine-setup after the first reboot? It'll give you the prompt to install everything you did but in a more organized way.

[@heisenbergon]

Hello. Who on Gnome tell me how to make black in applications such as qbittorrent and others. Dark theme is enabled but white in apps. ???

[@catchnkill]

@Prince Cooper Yes. qbittorrent uses qt. According to the author, the q in qbittorrent is due to the qt usage

[@demonicavenger6987]

316 megs? Holy shit😮

[@DarkLotusInc]

is wikipedia alpine's wiki?

[@drishalballaney6590]

if possible can you also please take a look at NixOS?

[@centralintelligenceagency6825]

@Prince Cooper NixOS is Linux.

[@DanielHf]

can you install alpine with btrfs and zram?

[@sbbetterthanu5314]

Sure. I have it this way on vps.

[@ukaszbatek9725]

I don't know how create wifi connection.

[@benarcher372]

First!

[@LovlyPan]

you lost me with your Vitual Machine setup. I need help with setting up Wlan0 and the configerations that there for come after...

[@juliuco_nikel]

como siempre un crash chacho ermmano

[@alexstone691]

I've heard alpine is not recommended for desktop use

[@mentalmarvin]

It's difficult to run packages compiled with glibc, so it lacks a bunch of apps. It is however possible to get many of these through flatpak.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

It's not primarily for desktop usage, anyways. It however can be, if you enable persistence and stick to lightweight environments. Your desktop should be of a lighter flavor, anyways.

[@rossmaxx]

I'd like to interject you for a moment but what you are referring to linux is actually gnu/linux or like what i like to say, gnu+linux.

[@eflinux]

You're right. I have a whole video on that too on the channel ☺️

[@chrisjchalifoux]

You have awlsome videos

[@SeekandYouWillFind]

Bitte stellen Sie standardmäßig ein Standard-BASH-Installationsskript bereit, damit Sie keine Nicht-Geeks verlieren, die einfach nur ein benutzerfreundliches GUI-Dienstprogramm wollen und keine Zeit für Geek-Schulungen haben.

[@mustafababdullah2485]

Someone commented to me that you don't understand German 😂 why would someone need a German keyboard if they didn't speak German???

[@ThatBrubakerFellow]

He doesn't speak high German? I think he's Swiss.

[@eflinux]

I do speak high German and understand Swiss German. I grew up in the Italian part of Switzerland and officially you learn high German in school.

[@ThatBrubakerFellow]

@@eflinux Oh cool. I didn't know high German was mandatory in schools. Thanks for replying to our foolish comments. Would you know French as well?

[@eflinux]

Yes, I do. Learned also in school.

[@Just-Another_Channel]

Never use this smoldering wreck of a distribution. It's full of bugs and broken code, making even making a bootable system almost impossible. It's documentation is either incomplete, out of date or dies not even exist. It has no community, for good reason to be honest. It is musl based, which causes a lot of unnecessary problems. I know for a fact there are many distributions out there, that arebmade for the same propose, but does it endlessly better than this garbage.