Alpine + mist · early days

A curated desktop for the machine you already have.

Alpymist is an opinionated Wayland desktop on Alpine Linux: Hyprland, configured once and kept in focus, secure by default, and shipped as nothing but signed packages.

Get Alpymist Read the manual

The name is Alpine plus mist, the haze on the mountains. It is also a pun on alchemist, which is roughly what turning a fifteen-year-old laptop back into a usable desktop amounts to.

one desktop

Hyprland, and only Hyprland

One desktop, configured once and kept in focus: Hyprland on Wayland, with its keybindings, theme, bar and launcher. The installer probes the machine and says how well it will run there, and why.

Read the decision →signed packages

Every piece of Alpymist, down to the wallpaper, is an apk in a signed repository, built in the open from a tagged commit. You boot the installer, or you apk add it onto Alpine, and upgrades are apk upgrade.

Read the decision →secure by default

Nothing unsafe is on

No automatic login, no passwordless root, no listening service, no secret kept in the clear. The means to weaken any of it ship as a switch that says what it gives up, and turns back off.

Read the decision →rust

First-party code in Rust

The installer, the login and lock screens, Settings, the menu and the popups under the bar are Rust. unsafe is denied workspace-wide and confined to one short file that talks to EGL, where there is no other way.

Read the decision →musl + flatpak

A base you can audit

Pure musl Alpine underneath. Proprietary and glibc-only software runs through Flatpak, in a sandbox, rather than natively beside it.

Read the decision →written down

Every decision has a record

What forced each choice, what was chosen and what it costs. A decision that is reversed gets a dated addendum, and the original stays.

Read the decision →

The desktop

What is in it

A login screen, a bar, a menu on Super+Space and a Settings app, with a terminal, a browser and Flatpak behind them. These are the parts Alpymist wrote itself. Each is in the manual, and each has a record of why it is the way it is.

The Alpymist desktop: a bar along the top, a terminal showing the probe's report, and the menu open over a mountain wallpaper. — The menu on Super+Space, over a terminal showing what the probe says of this machine.

Three tiled terminals: a shell that has run alpymist probe, nano editing the Hyprland configuration, and btop showing processor, memory, disks and processes. — Three terminals, tiled: a shell, nano on the Hyprland configuration, and btop.

The Settings window on its Appearance page, with style, accent colour, text size and a grid of wallpapers. — Settings › Appearance

The Settings window on its Displays page, with three screens side by side and the built-in one selected. — Settings › Displays, with a dock's two screens

Visual Studio Code filling the screen, with the Alpymist source tree on the left and a Rust file open. — Visual Studio Code, from Flathub

LibreOffice Writer with a one-page document about Alpymist: headings, paragraphs and a small table. — LibreOffice Writer

A screensaver of dark, pixelated mountain ranges in mist under a few stars. — The Mountains screensaver

The lock screen: a clock and date over a photograph of the Milky Way above mountains, and a card with the account's name and a password field. — The lock screen, which is the login screen

Taken on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon following the dev channel, on 1 October 2026. The lock screen is drawn by its own code rather than captured: while it is up, the compositor shows nothing else.

Settings, three ways in

One library behind a Settings app, the alpymist command line and the popups under the bar. Every setting the app shows, alpymist list shows too.

How to use it Why it is this way
The lock is the login screen

The same picture, clock and card, as a session lock the compositor keeps up even if the program drawing it dies.

How to use it Why it is this way
Screensavers are packages

A program and a file declaring its settings. Mountains and a starfield ship; anyone can package another without touching Alpymist.

How to use it Why it is this way
A layout for each set of screens

Arrange them in Settings, and the dock, the projector and the lid each get their layout back. Every screen has its own workspaces 1 to 9.

How to use it Why it is this way
A keyring, and an SSH agent that forgets

Secrets are kept in a keyring the login password unlocks. SSH passphrases are asked for in a prompt Ctrl+Alt+Delete vouches for.

How to use it Why it is this way
Copy and paste on Super

Super+C, X and V work in every window, terminals included. A clipboard history exists, and is off until you turn it on.

How to use it Why it is this way
Docks are asked about

A Thunderbolt or USB4 device reaches memory, so it is let in only when you approve it, with the IOMMU on.

How to use it Why it is this way
Fingerprints unlock, never log in

Once an administrator turns it on, an enrolled finger unlocks the screen and answers admin prompts. Logging in still takes the password.

How to use it Why it is this way
AI usage in the bar

Limits and spend for the AI tools you pay for. Providers are packages, keys live in the keyring, and nothing is on until you add one.

How to use it Why it is this way
Graphics in a virtual machine

In a virtio-gpu guest the installer offers a Mesa with the virgl driver, so Hyprland draws on the host's graphics card and not the processor.

How to use it Why it is this way

The newest of these reach the dev channel first, and the installer image with the release after. How the channels work.

Hardware

Said by probing, never by guessing

At install and again on first boot, Alpymist checks what the GPU, driver and memory can actually do, and says how Hyprland will run. Anything it cannot confirm counts against the machine, and nothing is refused on it: you decide.

Runs Hyprland on the GPU

Accelerated DRM, GL ES 3.0 or newer, 3 GiB of memory

Animations, blur, everything as it is meant to be.
Slow Hyprland on the processor

A software renderer such as llvmpipe, or less than 3 GiB of memory

It runs, and the probe says why it will not be quick.
Unlikely Hyprland may not start

No DRM/KMS device, only a firmware framebuffer, no EGL, or GL ES below 3.0

The installer says so, with the reasons, and lets you go on.

Status

Early, and installable

Each release comes with an installer image for x86_64 and for aarch64, built by CI from the same packages the signed repository serves; the x86_64 one is booted in QEMU before those packages are published. Installed systems upgrade with apk upgrade. It is young software with rough edges: try it in a virtual machine, or on hardware you do not need tomorrow.

Download options Latest release Follow on GitHub