Download

Get Alpymist

There are two ways onto an Alpymist system, and neither is a script piped into a shell. Add the signed repository to an Alpine machine you already have, or build the installer image and boot it.

Pre-alpha. Expect breakage. Try it in a virtual machine or on hardware you do not need tomorrow.

Available

On an existing Alpine v3.24 system

Trust the Alpymist key, add the repository and refresh the index. Alpymist is built against Alpine v3.24, and the repository only serves that release.

❯ doas wget -O /etc/apk/keys/alpymist-2026.rsa.pub https://pkgs.alpymist.org/alpymist-2026.rsa.pub
❯ echo https://pkgs.alpymist.org/v3.24/alpymist | doas tee -a /etc/apk/repositories
❯ doas apk update

Ask the probe which tier the machine can run, then add that tier's desktop:

❯ doas apk add alpymistctl
❯ alpymistctl probe

Probe says	Install
Full	`alpymist-desktop-full`
Lite or Potato	`alpymist-desktop-lite`
Legacy	`alpymist-desktop-legacy`

The ISO's installer also enables dbus, seatd and greetd and points the login screen at the right session. On an existing system that part is up to you for now.

Check the key before you trust it

The downloaded key should have this SHA-256 fingerprint, which matches the copy in the source repository at aports/alpymist-keys:

❯ sha256sum /etc/apk/keys/alpymist-2026.rsa.pub

ecf9b71668bd274fb8f195a8c7e39b68a81f92bb4ce12d9455cf154650cb7aad

Build it yourself

Bootable ISO

Signed images are not published yet. CI builds an x86_64 ISO every night and boots it in QEMU, and you can build the same image locally. You need Docker and a Rust toolchain.

❯ git clone https://github.com/bisand/alpymist.git
❯ cd alpymist
❯ make iso ARCH=x86_64
❯ make smoke ARCH=x86_64

make iso builds the packages inside an Alpine container and assembles an image in out/. make smoke boots it and checks that it reports a desktop tier. Use ARCH=aarch64 for ARM machines and Apple Silicon virtual machines.

Why only signed packages

Only the repository index is signed, by hand, with a key CI never sees. The index pins the hash of every package, so a compromised build can produce a bad artifact but never an update that an installed system will accept. The reasoning is in ADR 0002.