Enthusiast demos installing Alpine Linux with the Windows Installer

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That's right, you can install Alpine Linux with the Windows Installer. But... should you?

Alpine Linux available through a Windows installer.
Alpine Linux available through a Windows installer. (Image credit: Naman Sood)

Late last month, developer Naman Sood posted a screenshot of Alpine Linux inside a Windows installer, and followed it with a semi-satirical YouTube video showing the install inside a VM— but as of April 30, he's released a full tutorial and explanation. 

As for why you might want to do this, well, even Sood is not sure. As he says himself, "I'm not sure why you would want to do this. Presumably for the same reason as me? I also don't know what that was."

Amusing motivations (or lack thereof) aside, there are some interesting technical details to pick apart in the original documentation that we'd like to discuss. 

For one, only Linux distributions that let you manually mount partitions can be used here: Arch Linux and Alpine Linux. Further compatibility concerns mean that only Alpine Linux can reasonably be installed through the Windows installer— Arch and other distributions are reliant on a successful "pacstrap" command during installation.

Alpine Linux is a "small, simple, secure" Linux distribution known for its super-lightweight footprint and being one of very few distros not based on GNU Core Utilities. It's been compared to the much heavier Gentoo distribution since they're both targeted so squarely at power users wanting to make the most of their hardware.

Secondly, there is no version of this install process that doesn't involve extreme tweaking to install what will likely be an unreliable operating system. Even if you do everything properly, NTFS filesystem compatibility issues could render usage of your PC impossible without a live CD, and software may not install properly with some of Windows' still-present restrictions.

Should you wish to try this out for yourself, know that it will to take a while to even get to the first boot. You'll need to manually create partitions, modify several text and configuration files, shove Alpine Linux into a WIM (Windows Imaging Format) file, and... manually save and insert a EULA (GNU recommended) that the Windows installer can read. 

Of all the required steps required, bringing your own EULA might be the funniest — especially since it took three days for Sood to figure out.

Christopher Harper
Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JamesJones44
    Alpine isn't really a desktop distro, it's targeted more towards non-tiny embedded and server environments. Still a fun experiment I'm sure.
    Reply
  • cassiofernando
    JamesJones44 said:
    Alpine isn't really a desktop distro, it's targeted more towards non-tiny embedded and server environments. Still a fun experiment I'm sure.
    Hi, Alpine user here. I found quite funny this thing of installing it from Windows install 😂.
    Long before Alpine was really not good on desktop but recently its much easier to install and use (for me it's the easiest linux distro). I'm using it on my main pc, laptop and minipc I am using as home server with intel and amd hardwares.
    Reply
  • kirk781
    cassiofernando said:
    Hi, Alpine user here. I found quite funny this thing of installing it from Windows install 😂.
    Long before Alpine was really not good on desktop but recently its much easier to install and use (for me it's the easiest linux distro). I'm using it on my main pc, laptop and minipc I am using as home server with intel and amd hardwares.
    I have distrohopped multiple times but never used Alpine till now. On a scale from Ubuntu to Gentoo, how hard would you say the learning curve for Alpine is?
    Reply
  • cassiofernando
    kirk781 said:
    I have distrohopped multiple times but never used Alpine till now. On a scale from Ubuntu to Gentoo, how hard would you say the learning curve for Alpine is?
    Well, it's much more easier than Gentoo. Alpine installer supports disk encryption and multiples DEs, if you want just the basic it's really easy.

    If you want to setup bluetooth and wifi you will need to check Alpine wiki to see what the packages you need to install, Alpine only has the minimal packages to get things working (a example is when you select to install KDE it doesn't even have dolphin file manager).
    Reply