My journey to get Alpine + Wayland + River to work on ThinkPad T14 G3 AMD

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README.md

Table of Contents

linux-on-desktop

Preparing hardware
Installing Alpine
Postinstall
Installing river

Login manager
Installing Waybar
HiDPI

HiDPI - cursors

Environment
Launcher
Screenshots
Clipboard
Emoji keyboard

Other software

Firefox
Chrome
Git
Telegram
Element

Hardware

Sleep
WiFi
Backlight
Trackpoint
Sound

Mic mute button

Webcam

Additional

Screen sharing
Prevent firefox sharing indicator from taking the entire tile

TODO

linux-on-desktop

My journey to get Alpine + Wayland + River to work on ThinkPad T14 G3 AMD (21CF004PGE)

Preparing hardware

Disable secure boot and fn-lock in bios (so that F-keys work as F-keys by default and require Fn for their secondary multimedia functions).

Installing Alpine

Follow https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation

Note that you will need to use Rufus; Ventoy does not work on this laptop (hangs after choosing the image).

Postinstall

In /etc/apk/repositories, comment out 3.16, uncomment edge (main, community, testing), since some of the packages we're going to install (river, element-desktop) only exist in testing.

Then

doas apk update
doas apk upgrade

Installing river

doas apk add eudev
doas setup-udev
doas apk add mesa-dri-gallium mesa-va-gallium
doas apk add river river-doc mandoc
doas apk add adwaita-icon-theme foot ttf-dejavu
doas rc-update add seatd
doas rc-service seatd start
doas addgroup YOURUSER audio
doas addgroup YOURUSER input
doas addgroup YOURUSER seat
doas addgroup YOURUSER video
doas addgroup YOURUSER wheel
install -Dm0755 /usr/share/doc/river/examples/init -t ~/.config/river

Also:

doas apk add xwayland

because the latest river in testing is built in a way that requires xwayland.

Try to run with

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp river

You should see the blue screen of river. Try to open terminal with Win+Shift+Enter. Try to exit with Win+Shift+E.

To enter username/password in GUI, get to river after that, and get back to logon screen after exiting river:

doas apk add elogind polkit-elogind
doas rc-update add elogind
doas rc-service elogind start
doas apk add greetd greetd-gtkgreet cage
doas addgroup greetd video
doas rc-update add greetd

change /etc/greetd/config.toml

command = "cage -s -- gtkgreet"

and create /etc/greetd/environments with a single line river

and reboot.

I didn't find a way to make cage+gtkgreet handle HiDPI, the text is very tiny.

An alternative is agreety, but for some reason it seems that both greeter and standard linux login prompt run at the same time on the same terminal, making it impossible to actually login.

Installing Waybar

doas apk add waybar

and add startup section at the end of river init file (~/.config/river/init):

# startup
riverctl spawn "waybar"

For time to work,

doas apk add tzdata

HiDPI

doas apk add kanshi
mkdir .config/kanshi

and create .config/kanshi/config with the following:

profile {
	output eDP-1 enable scale 2.5
}

(eDP-1 identifier was obtained by installing sway, running sway (by adding it to /etc/greetd/environments, and in terminal inside sway executing swaymsg -t get_outputs).

HiDPI - cursors

And in order to have decently sized mouse cursors instead of the tiniest ones, add the following line to the top of .config/river/init:

riverctl xcursor-theme Adwaita 24

This will only affect river itself, the cursor will stay tiny in waybar and firefox and maybe other applications. To solve this:

doas apk add gsettings-desktop-schemas
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme 'Adwaita'

Environment

In order to not have to create wrapper scripts for all apps:

Create /usr/local/bin/inga-river (and later chmod +x /usr/local/bin/inga-river) with the following (found in google):

#!/bin/sh

export GDK_BACKEND=wayland,x11
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
export CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland-egl
export ECORE_EVAS_ENGINE=wayland-egl
export ELM_ENGINE=wayland_egl
export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1
export NO_AT_BRIDGE=1
export BEMENU_BACKEND=wayland

river $@

and replace river with inga-river in /etc/greetd/environments.

Launcher

doas apk add bemenu, and then add this line into your river config:

riverctl map normal Super R spawn 'pidof bemenu-run || bemenu-run -i -n'

Screenshots

doas apk add wayshot, then add this line to river config:

riverctl map normal None Print spawn 'wayshot --stdout | wl-copy'

Clipboard

Works by default, use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V in foot

Emoji keyboard

doas apk add rofi-emoji rofi-emoji-wayland wtype and add this line to your river config

riverctl map normal Super period spawn 'rofi -modi emoji -show emoji'

Other software

Firefox

doas apk add firefox
firefox

go to about:support and make sure that Window Protocol is wayland, not xwayland. (it should be wayland because MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND is set to 1 by inga-river)

For some reason, while sound in general works fine in firefox (after following the steps from Hardware section), in WebRTC pages there is crackling much louder than the actual voices, making it unusable for voice/video calls/meetings.

Chrome

doas apk add chromium

It should also be wayland by default, but you can check it by doas apk add xeyes && xeyes.

In order for screen sharing to work, go to chrome://flags/#enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer and enable it. Note though that every time you screenshare, there will be two promps from xdg-desktop-portal, one for picking a source, and another for actually sharing.

Git

doas apk install git
git config --global credential.helper --store

doas apk install telegram-desktop

Element

doas apk install element-desktop

Hardware

Sleep

With default settings, laptop goes to sleep after some idle period. When it wakes up, the root fs is readonly, meaning that I have to restart the laptop.

Adding acpiphp.disable=1 and pcie_aspm=off to grub config does not solve the issue.

Disabling S0ix in UEFI only made things worse: even though cat /sys/power/mem_sleep reported that S3 (deep) is default, after system goes to sleep it is impossible to wake it up, it does not react to key or power button presses.

What did solve the issue was:

reenable S0ix in BIOS,
doas apk add linux-firmware-amdgpu,
editing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub to add the following options: acpiphp.disable=1 pcie_aspm=off acpi_osi='Windows 2020' iommu=soft.

Now after waking up (after being suspended with doas pm-suspend from pm-utils package) root fs is still readwrite. But sometimes network disappears after wakeup.

For suspend on lid close and unsuspend on open, follow https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Suspend_on_LID_close :

doas mkdir -p /etc/acpi/LID
doas nano /etc/acpi/LID/00000080

should have the following content

#!/bin/sh
exec pm-suspend

and then

doas chmod +x /etc/acpi/LID/00000080
doas rc-service acpid restart

WiFi

At the moment Linux kernel does not support Qualcomm NFA725.

Otherwise, alpine wiki describes how to configure WiFi using iwd.

Backlight

doas apk add light
doas nano /etc/udev/rules.d/backlight.rules

add the following lines into backlight.rules to make it possible for all users in video group (not just superusers) to control backlight:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", KERNEL=="amdgpu_bl0", RUN+="/bin/chgrp video /sys/class/backlight/%k/brightness"
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", KERNEL=="amdgpu_bl0", RUN+="/bin/chmod g+w /sys/class/backlight/%k/brightness"

and then

doas rc-service udev restart

Backlight control with Fn+F5/F6 should work now.

(amdgpu_bl0 is specific for this laptop; value for others can be obtained from /sys/class/backlight/)

Trackpoint

Disregard this:

find /sys/devices/platform/i8042/ -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint
to find which serio corresponds to trackpoint, then
echo 70 | doas tee /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/sensitivity
for reasonably low sensitivity (does not persist; for persistence TODO separate udev rule).

Instead of configuring sensitivity, it's probably better to configure pointer speed in river.

Find your trackpoint with riverctl list-inputs | grep -i trackpoint, it will look like 2:10:TPPS/2_Elan_TrackPoint.

Then add the following to your river config:

riverctl input 2:10:TPPS/2_Elan_TrackPoint accel-profile adaptive
riverctl input 2:10:TPPS/2_Elan_TrackPoint pointer-accel -0.5

Sound

Based on https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/PipeWire

doas apk add dbus dbus-openrc
doas rc-service dbus start
doas apk add pipewire wireplumber rtkit alsa-utils pipewire-alsa
doas addgroup YOURUSER rtkit
doas addgroup root audio
alsamixer

In alsamixer, use F6 to find the target sound card (most likely 0 is HDMI and 1 is ordinary). Remember its number, and in /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf, replace defaults.ctl.card and defaults.pcm.card with the target number.

In /usr/local/bin/inga-river, replace river $@ with dbus-run-session -- river $@, relogin (Ctrl+Shift+E).

Then

doas rc-service alsa start
doas rc-update add alsa
/usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher

Make sure that everything works (with wpctl status, pw-cat -p YOURFILE.flac or just opening YouTube in FF).

Then make pipewire start automatically: in river config, add another startup line:

riverctl spawn "/usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher"

Control microphone and volume with alsamixer. And change the handlers for XF86Audio (adding -repeat and replacing the spawned command):

riverctl map -repeat $mode None XF86AudioRaiseVolume spawn 'amixer set "Master" 5%+'
riverctl map -repeat $mode None XF86AudioLowerVolume spawn 'amixer set "Master" 5%-'
riverctl map $mode None XF86AudioMute spawn 'amixer set "Master" toggle'

Note that the internal microphone does not work and is not detected by pipewire. Only external microphones work.

Mic in browser didn't work, but then it started to work at some point, without me seemingly changing anything.

Mic mute button

Create /etc/acpi/events/lenovo-mutemic with the following content:

event=button/micmute MICMUTE 00000080 00000000 K
action=amixer --card 1 set 'Capture' toggle

where card number is the one obtained in previous section; and event could be determined by running acpi_listen and pressing mic button.

Then, after doas rc-service acpid restart, mic button should control internal mic capture in alsa and switch internal mic led on and off.

Webcam

Should work after following the steps for "Audio".

Can be tested in https://webrtc.github.io/test-pages

Additional

doas apk add xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

and DO NOT add to your river config

riverctl spawn "/usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr"

(for some reason it does not work when spawned by river during init (process is running, but screensharing attempts lead to nothing), but /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr & from shell works fine)

Add the following lines to river config (before the last exec line):

riverctl float-filter-add title "Firefox — Sharing Indicator"
riverctl float-filter-add title 'Firefox — Sharing Indicator'

(TODO: check which kind of quotes works)

TODO

Fix internal mic
Docker
IDE
Notifications
Make river usable
Make waybar usable (+waybar fonts)
nushell + starship instead of ash
Mail client
Fix call audio in firefox
WiFi