I said "dance", not "fuck", don't get it confused. — Cardi B

Whereas there are official docs and myriad guides to follow regarding setting up Alpine Linux I decided to record the process on a brand new ASUS VivoBook. Why the E203 VivoBook? I'm a big fan of the ASUS EeePC series and the E203 is a worthy successor. Simple and small, lightweight, and with a keyboard that pleases the fingertips: the E203 checked some of my boxes. Lack of back lit keys turned out to be more bothersome than I'd figured it would be. But coming equipped with USB-C, microSD, HDMI, and two USB 3.1 ports makes it a pretty robust offering from ASUS for a budget laptop. Slick and light with a price point that won't leave your wallet longing for that soft feel of greenback cotton, the VivoBook makes me shout "Republic of China all the way!". I also had an ASUS Chromebook hanging around burning a hole in my floor but the star is the VivoBook.

First, use rpi-imager to create a bootable USB drive. It just works.

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Second, turn off secure boot in the BIOS (get to the BIOS with F2 on the VivoBook; Chromebook requires developer mode).

Third, this is a simple sys install (not running from RAM) so just follow steps given in installer.

Fourth, you will need the community repos so edit /etc/apk/repositories and remove the comment to allow downloading from community repos.

Finally, as root begin installing goodies:

# become root or use doas
su -
# add basics
apk add man mandocs openbox xterm xinit terminus-font doas

...and some other crap:

apk add acpi git neofetch feh cwm polybar light
# acpi is a client for battery, power, and thermal readings
# git for duh, neofetch for hacker factor, and feh is for wallpaper
# the calm window manager is my go to
# polybar is a great status bar
# light for screen backlight control

# Getting bluetooth working requires dbus and bluez 
# Check out dbus here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/
apk add dbus dbus-openrc
apk add bluez bluez-openrc bluez-alsa
# oddly found that out here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/index.php?title=Bluetooth

# Remember to add bluetooth and others to runtime so it works at boot!
rc-update add bluetooth boot
rc-update add bluealsa boot
rc-update add dbus default

# audio is easy with alsa drivers and such
# ("easy" - alas, alas...alsa doesn't see sound card on Chromebook; I hate being dyslexic)
apk add alsa-utils alsa-utils-doc alsa-lib alsaconf alsa-ucm-conf
# read more about alsa here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture

# to change shell we need libuser
apk add libuser
# Alpine uses ash as default shell but one might want bash
apk add bash

# OK, done with apk for now

touch /etc/login.defs
# make sure /etc/default is around
touch /etc/default/useradd

# pick bash if you want
doas lchsh <user>

# do magic
setup-xorg-base

# add your user to all useful groups
addgroup <user> audio
addgroup <user> input
addgroup <user> video
# logout so the changes take effect

# startx needs .xinitrc to load the Xresources file
# and start cwm
touch .xinitrc 

# before starting X, install setxkbmap for compose key
apk add setxkbmap
# see .XCompose for more
# then, startx or xinit!
startx

OK, once that stuff is out of the way let's work on the touchpad. Install and read about xinput:

apk add xinput xinput-doc

In order to discover the key mapping of the touchpad issue this command:

xinput list

And from there once you've discovered what device, get the button map via:

xinput get-button-map "the device"

And when you are ready, set the button map with:

xinput set-button-map 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The mapping is in physical order and setting one of the above values with "0" will disable the button. Thus setting 2 to "0" will disable that action.

The Chromebook doesn't have traditional function keys so use xev to find the right keycode or keysym name. Bind the chosen key in .cwmrc to the action you'd like taken. For example, having the reduce brightness key actual reduce screen brightness.

To get suspend to work on LID close follow this guide: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Suspend_on_LID_close

You might need to create the directories and don't forget to make the script you'll copy executable.

And, finally, here are the fonts that work best for most setups:

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

Blogging and nix flakes and docker

Before starting let's install docker:

apk add docker
addgroup <user> docker

# have docker start on boot
rc-update add docker boot
service start docker

I use a static site generator of my own (less than stellar) making called bss — here's how to get it working with Nix and Docker:

# Once you've cloned bss, mount the dirs and expose the ports
docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/bss/:/bss -v $(pwd)/blog_bt:/blog_bt -p 9000:9000 nixos/nix
# bss is flakes based so we have to pass annoying flags but this can also be set in nix config
nix build --extra-experimental-features nix-command --extra-experimental-features flakes
# copy the resulting program into a dir on the PATH
cp result/bin/bss  /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin/