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Install Alice

Here is a guide to installing Alice Linux on your computer using the chroot method. You can do this from your existing Linux distribution or from a live environment, such as Alice Live or another Linux distribution. Make sure your chosen environment has the necessary partitioning tools, filesystem tools, and extraction tools.

Get Alice rootfs tarball

Download the Alice rootfs tarball from the release page, along with its sha256sum file.

$ curl -O <url>
$ curl -O <url>.sha256sum

Verify the checksum of the Alice rootfs tarball:

$ sha256sum -c alicelinux-rootfs-20240525.tar.xz.sha256sum

Make sure it prints:

alicelinux-rootfs-20240525.tar.xz: OK

Prepare the partition and filesystem

Prepare the partition and filesystem of your choice. In this guide, I will use ext4 as an example.

# cfdisk /dev/sdX
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdXY

Mount your created partition somewhere. In this guide, I will use /mnt/alice as the mount point.

# mkdir /mnt/alice
# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/alice

Extract the Alice rootfs tarball

Extract the Alice rootfs into the mounted partition.

$ tar xvf alicelinux-rootfs-*.tar.xz -C /mnt/alice

Enter chroot

First, chroot into Alice. (Replace /mnt/alice with your chosen mount point.)

# /mnt/alice/usr/bin/apkg-chroot /mnt/alice

Any further commands after this will be executed inside the Alice environment.

Clone Alice repos

Fetch the Alice packages repositories somewhere. I'll fetch them inside the /var/lib directory to keep the system clean.

# cd /var/lib
# git clone --depth=1 https://codeberg.org/emmett1/alicelinux

Once we have the repositories cloned, we need to configure apkg. apkg is Alice's package build system (or package manager). By default, Alice does not provide an apkg config file (yes, apkg can work without a config file), but we need to create one. The apkg config file should be located at /etc/apkg.conf by default. Let's create one.

Configure apkg.conf

First, we set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS. Alice base packages are built using -O3 -march=x86-64 -pipe. You can use these settings or change them to your preference.

# echo 'export CFLAGS="-O3 -march=x86-64 -pipe"' >> /etc/apkg.conf

And use whats in CFLAGS for CXXFLAGS.

# echo 'export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"' >> /etc/apkg.conf

Next set MAKEFLAGS. I will use 6 for my 8 threads machine.

# echo 'export MAKEFLAGS="-j6"' >> /etc/apkg.conf

I'm also going to set NINJAJOBS here. Without it, ninja will use all threads of your machine when compiling.

# echo 'export NINJAJOBS="6"' >> /etc/apkg.conf

Next, we need to set the package's build scripts path (I'll call it package repos) so apkg can find them. The APKG_REPO variable can accept multiple values for multiple package repos.

Alice provides four (4) package repos (at the time of this writing): core, extra, xorg and wayland. core contains all base packages, and extra includes other packages beyond the base. xorg and wayland contain packages for gui and their dependencies.

First, get the absolute path of the package repos where we cloned them. By the way, we are still inside the /var/lib directory where we cloned the repo.

NOTE: USE TAB COMPLETION!

# realpath alicelinux/repos/core
/var/lib/alicelinux/repos/core
# realpath alicelinux/repos/extra
/var/lib/alicelinux/repos/extra

After we have the path of our package repos, add it to the APKG_REPO variable in /etc/apkg.conf.

# echo 'APKG_REPO="/var/lib/alicelinux/repos/core /var/lib/alicelinux/repos/extra"' >> /etc/apkg.conf

NOTE: All repo paths must be declared in the APKGEPO variable, seperated by a single space.

After setting up our package repos, make sure apkg can find the packages. We can use apkg -s <pattern> to search for packages.

# apkg -s sway
swayidle
swaybg
swaylock
sway

If the output appears, then we are good to go.

Next, we will set up directories for packages, sources, and work. By default, these directories are inside the package template, but we will change them to /var/cache/pkg, /var/cache/src, and /var/cache/work respectively. You can change these to any location where you want to store these files.

First, create the directories:

# mkdir -p /var/cache/pkg
# mkdir -p /var/cache/src
# mkdir -p /var/cache/work

Then add these paths to /etc/apkg.conf.

# echo 'APKG_PACKAGE_DIR=/var/cache/pkg' >> /etc/apkg.conf
# echo 'APKG_SOURCE_DIR=/var/cache/src' >> /etc/apkg.conf
# echo 'APKG_WORK_DIR=/var/cache/work' >> /etc/apkg.conf

Full system upgrade/rebuild

On the first install, we should upgrade the system first.

NOTE: Use uppercase U for a system upgrade, and lowercase u to upgrade a specific package of your choice.

# apkg -U

If you changed CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS to something other than the default, it's a good time to perform a full rebuild first. In this case, you can skip upgrading the system because performing a full rebuild will already use the latest version in package repos.

NOTE: Add the -f flag to force rebuild of existing prebuilt package. NOTE: apkg -a prints all installed packages on the system.

# apkg -u $(apkg -a)

Install development packages

Before installing any additional packages, we need to install development packages.

# apkg -I meson cmake pkgconf libtool automake perl

Install kernel

You can configure your own kernel from kernel.org or use the one provided by Alice.

NOTE: The provided kernel will take a lot of time to compile because many options are enabled.

If you want to use Alice's kernel, just run:

# apkg -I linux

Install firmware

If your hardware requires firmware, install it using:

# apkg -I linux-firmware linux-firmware-nvidia

Install bootloader

In this guide, I'm going to use grub as the bootloader. Install grub:

# apkg -I grub

Then generate grub config:

# grub-install /dev/sdX
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Hostname

Change alice to the hostname of your choice.

# echo alice > /etc/hostname

Fstab

Change the partition and filesystem of your choice below:

# echo '/dev/sda1 swap swap defaults 0 1' >> /etc/fstab
# echo '/dev/sda2 / ext4 defaults 0 0' >> /etc/fstab

Enable runit services

Alice uses busybox's runit as its main service manager. Enable the required services:

# ln -s /etc/sv/tty1 /var/service
# ln -s /etc/sv/tty2 /var/service
# ln -s /etc/sv/tty3 /var/service

I'm enabling 3 tty services. tty is required; without it, you won't be able to log in (or run any commands).

The runit service directory is /etc/sv. Create a symlink from /etc/sv/<service> to /var/service to enable it; remove the symlink to disable it.

Setup user and password

Add your user:

# adduser <user>

Add your user to the wheel group:

# adduser <user> wheel

You might need to add your user to the input and video groups to start the Wayland compositor later, and the audio group to have working audio:

# adduser <user> input
# adduser <user> video
# adduser <user> audio

Root password

Set the password for the root user:

# passwd

Networking

You might want to set up networking before rebooting. Use wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd.

# apkg -I wpa_supplicant dhcpcd

Configure your SSID:

# wpa_passphrase <YOUR SSID> <ITS PASSWORD> >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Enable the service:

# ln -s /etc/sv/wpa_supplicant /var/service
# ln -s /etc/sv/dhcpcd /var/service

Timezone

Install tzdata:

# apkg -I tzdata

Then create a symlink for your timezone to /etc/localtime:

# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kuala_Lumpur /etc/localtime

Alternatively, you can copy it and then uninstall tzdata to keep your installed packages minimal:

# cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kuala_Lumpur /etc/localtime
# apkg -r tzdata

Reboot and enjoy!

Exit the chroot environment and unmount the Alice partition, then reboot:

# exit
# umount /mnt/alice
# reboot

Some important notes

Alice uses spm and apkg as its package manager and package build system. Run with the -h flag to see available options.
Additional scripts are provided with the name apkg-<script> which will be added (or removed) from time to time.
Use revdep to scan for broken libraries and binaries after system upgrades and package removals. You can use revdep -v to print out missing required libraries, and use apkg -f -u $(revdep) to scan and rebuild broken packages.
Run updateconf to update config files in /etc after package upgrades.