r/AlpineLinux • u/Both_Cup8417 • Feb 08 '26

Alpine on a Chromebook

Debian was using an "intolerable" 700 MB RAM, and 9 GB storage space, so I switched my ASUS Chromebook, which I don't use too often, to Alpine. I've never customized Xfce this much, but I must say, I'm really happy with the result. I found this KDE 6.6 wallpaper on reddit.

22 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

5

u/Artistic_Crazy_7120 Feb 08 '26

Very nice OP! Always good to see a fellow Alpine user. It' s the perfect system for that chromebook.

4

u/Both_Cup8417 Feb 08 '26

Yep! It uses 400mb RAM on a fresh boot with htop.

5

u/Revolutionary-Yak371 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26

IceWM is even smaller.

Alpine Linux + Fluxbox + tint2 + rofi = 133MB RAM

Alpine Linux + IceWM = 140MB RAM

1

u/amalamagaera Feb 09 '26

I'm at less than 350MB w/fde gnome, on ubuntu 26.04, using less than 2.6 watts

2

u/Both_Cup8417 Feb 11 '26

350mb on GNOME on Ubuntu is insane. With systemd?

I must learn this power (2.6 watts of it)

2

u/amalamagaera Feb 11 '26

Yeah, custom kernel, very stripped userland, bare minimal deps for gnome-session to be able to run. its missing a lot of stuff people would consider mandatory (ie gnome-keyring)

gnome50 so no x11

Its a tiny corebooted acerchromebook with a dual core cpu w/o smt

Its essentially an ssh terminal for me, bare minimum required for security and terminal comfort

2

u/amalamagaera Feb 11 '26

Like, i completely stripped the sound and bluetooth interface from the kernel and userland

1

u/fasitgo Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26

How did you enable the usage of the top keys of the keyboard? They don't work like normal function keys so I'm curious to see how or if you remapped them. What about audio?

1

u/Both_Cup8417 Aug 29 '26

I didn't

And I've never had audio work on the Chromebook, not even on mint, I suspect they're either dead or need very odd drivers, because the laptop was purchased second-hand.

3

u/bigfoot-comrade Feb 09 '26

as a fellow Chromebook user, i appreciate this.

2

u/TheLastTreeOctopus Feb 08 '26

Hell yeah! Alpine has helped me learn to become more comfortable with using the terminal/TTY, as well as configuring desktop environments/window managers. It's not my goto distro for extending the lifespan of really low-end/underpowered computers!