Install an Alpine Desktop VM

Alpine Linux is widely used in containerized environments like Docker images. Why, its small size, fast boot time, and reduced attack surface and enabling efficient resource utilization.

Nice things about Alpine

• Minimalistic: Alpine Linux is designed to be lightweight, making it ideal for resource-constrained systems (minimal disk space and low memory requirements). But, still or because of it good performance.
• Enhanced security: Alpine has a strong emphasis on security practices and advanced measures such as stack protection, hardened kernel, and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). Skipping the normal bloat and use a minimal package set reduces the attack surface and ensures a more secure desktop environment.
• APK : Alpine Package Keeper lets you choose from many lightweight window managers, desktop environments, and a vast repository of software packages.
• Active Community Support
• Open RC instead of the gigantic systemd
• No Gnome to keep it small as possible

Installation

Download the ISO image Visit the download page and for AMD64 architectures click the “x86_64” button in the “STANDARD” section, less than 220 MB.

Create a small VM and use that image, 1-2 GB memory and 8-12 GB disk. The reason we use so many resources is that we will create a Desktop. Here you may like to set the CPU Resources Limits, 2 cores but limit to 1.0 (2 * 50%).

Start and login as root, no password.

Start the Alpine Linux Installation

Type setup-alpine and press Enter to begin the Alpine installation.
If you do don't know what to answer, use the ? if available.
Any mistake can be corrected by re-running the setup-alpine.

• Next enter the hostname as FQDN, e.g., foo.example.com
• Next enter networking details IP (192.0.2.39) address or DHCP.
  Net mask 255.255.255.0, GW (192.0.2.1)
• Next is the DNS domain name and the DNS servers
• Next, use a proxy or answer none
• Next the important step root password, New password: enter a long and complicated one
• Next your timezone, (I used to work for multinationals, and it was all UTC) Enter the Region/Capital to select. For more info, see Reference below.
• Next select an Alpine Linux mirror (random, detect and fastest or edit)
  • Enable the Community repo by hitting c

Add a normal user. We don't like running things as root, it's dangerous. If you don't have an SSH key for the user, you need to add it later for security reasons. Select your SSH server, OpenSSH is default.

• Next select the disk, sda and select how to use it
  Choose between the following options :
  • System disk mode (sys): a traditional hard-disk install that creates three partitions on the selected storage device, “/boot,” “swap,” and “/” (the file system root). Most suitable for generic desktop machines.
  • Data disk mode (data): This mode runs from system RAM but swaps storage, and the entire “/var” directory gets mounted from a persistent storage device. Helpful in having RAM-accelerated servers.
  • Crypt: As the names suggest, you can set up an encrypted LUKS volume. You will be asked again for “sys” or “data” mode.
  • LVM: Enable logical volume manager and ask again for “sys” or “data” mode.

For a desktop system, we select sys mode, confirm by hitting Enter.

All done, please reboot and add the key for your user.

Post Installation Steps

Add the community repo

Edit the vi /etc/apk/repositories file and remove the comment (#) before the community repository line to enable it, if you didn't do it at install.

Add a shell and other tools

Next, we’ll install a Bash shell (by default it's sh) and the sudo (by default it's doas) command or create an alias sudo=doas. Finally, we’ll add our user to the “wheel” group so that we can execute commands with root privileges and set his default shell to Bash. Edit according to your needs:

apk add bash bash-completion sudo shadow
echo '%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL' > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel
adduser climber wheel
usermod -s /bin/bash climber

Reboot the system

Adding the community repo

If you need things like the QEMU-Guest-Agent or sudo, you need to activate the community repo. Edit the file /etc/apk/repositories and remove the # in front of the …/community lines. Install it by:

apk add qemu-guest-agent

Setup X-window

Alpine Linux provides users with the setup-xorg-base command to automatically install all needed packages for running a desktop environment.

setup-xorg-base

Install Xfce on Alpine Linux

Xfce is lightweight, efficient, and visually appealing while using minimal system resources desktop environment, so it’s a perfect match for your Alpine system.

Add the basic tools, add your favorites

apk add xfce4 xfce4-terminal xfce4-screensaver lightdm-gtk-greeter dbus firefox

Install additional fonts, if needed:

apk add font-awesome font-dejavu font-inconsolata font-liberation font-noto font-noto-cjk  font-noto-extra font-terminus 

Enabled Light DM and D-Bus services to start up on boot automatically:

rc-update add dbus
rc-update add lightdm

Reboot the system

After the reboot, you have a xfce desktop

Other useful commands

Change the Keymap

At first log in, your keyboard is US, change to yours by opening a terminal and issue this command:

doas setup-keymap

Change the Desktop Keyboard Layout

Open Applications → Settings → Keyboard → Layout and Uncheck Use system defaults and hit + to add a keyboard layout. After adding one, you may delete the standard keyboard layout.

Change the Timezone

If you need to change the timezone from what you chose at initial configuring the VM:

This will add necessary setup scripts on Alpine, if not present:

apk add --update alpine-conf tzdata

To actually change the Timezone, run the following command:

setup-timezone -z Europe/Berlin

You can now remove setup scripts package, if required:

apk del alpine-conf

References

Alpine Linux ^[1] Alpine Wiki ^[2] TZ ^[3]