linux-on-desktop

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

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).

Installing River

In /etc/apk/repositories, uncomment TODO

doas apk update
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.

Installing Waybar

doas apk add waybar

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

# startup
riverctl spawn "waybar"

Hardware

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.

Sound

doas apk add pamixer

TODO