Who remembers Antergos
You’re using the meme wrong. The “at home” needs to be worse than the “mom can we get?”
I know, it was just play on Void 😊.
Frankly I’d much rather have void. Super cool distro, a lot of things about it seem like an ideal fit for me, I just don’t really have the technical skill to get a minimal distro all set up the way I want it
Plus their logo is pretty. Which shouldn’t matter but like, look at it- it’s a cool logo!
Yes, the install process is difficult to perform. But once you do it, you’ll feel like a wizard. You learn so much from the process if you do a manual chroot install. It helps you understand how the installation process for other distros like Debian works. If you have some free time, I would recommend trying it in a virtual machine.
I tried when I set up my new laptop and definitely learned a ton, but eventually stalled at getting network manager setup so I could use GNOME settings to configure networks, and getting sound set up
I completely forgot about trying it in a VM, I may have to go give that a try!
If it had package kit implementation so I could use a graphical package manager/app store it’d basically be my perfect distro if I could get it set up the way I want. An independent distro, super elegant, if I understand right the packages are all vanilla, “stable rolling release”. I really like it, a minimal distro is just a bit beyond me skill-wise, and I’d miss having a way to browse native (non-flatpak) applications graphically
Sorry to hear about the network manager issues! I could be wrong on this, but I think Gnome is not the best supported DE in void - possibly because of how heavily tied it is to systemd. I wish I could help, but I still configure my wifi using
wpa_supplicant.conf
. Maybe dbus wasn’t setup properly?Regarding audio, the pipewire documentation for Void is pretty good. It’s pretty thematic of the whole Void linux experience: you have to read the handbook and follow its steps closely, but it’s very well written and easy to understand. It can definitely be time-consuming as well though.
Void is definitely all the things you mentioned. I installed it on a few machines, the first in early 2020 and it has never given me an issue. Extremely stable and boring. I’m impressed that it has so many packages in its repository, but that’s a testament to how well
xbps
is written. But there are a few things missing since it’s fair from the mainstream, including packagekit. I had never heard of it before you mentioned it - I found a fork on github to support it, but it doesn’t look very well maintained.
Why isn’t Manjaro the one in the meme?
I use manjaro and you said nothing but facts.
I just quit Manjaro about two months ago and i agree.
I haven’t tried Manjaro and I don’t have an opinion
I switched back to Manjaro today and I agree.
I don’t agree with it being a cheap version of arch, it works too good for that, it deserves more respect
Nah, it’s just play 😊.
It’s better than Arch if you ask me, I use it on all my rigs.
Okay :) I’ve been using it for a few years now, have never looked back at arch or any other distribution 😄
It’s so freaking stable, it’s boring 😂.
Yeah well, playing around with the package manager, for example creating templates for newer version of apps, definitely keeps me engaged, when I find the time 😄
Same 😊.
the only thing void has over arch is more architecture support (which is kinda ironic)
Stability as well. It’s probably the most stable rolling release distro out there.
that kinda depends on your personal experience - for example ive been running arch for 2 years, i do weekly updates and ive never encountered a single issue
How dare you.
As one of the dozens of Void Linux users, I too find this very offensive!
(But hey, at least we’re getting some attention, which is nice…)
Oh, come on, I use Void too, it was just a play on Void 😁.
I’m always baffled when people try to use void as their desktop. Anyone do this?
Why? Any distro can be used for anything.
I do. I like it. I don’t think it tries to fill the same niche as Arch, as a former Arch daily driver.
Yep, I use it as a desktop OS. Why is it baffling?
Is void a distro?
Yes. Independent, rolling, stable.
rolling, stable
Huh?
Yep, believe it or not, it’s probably the most stable rolling release distro out there. I’ve used it for the past 4, 5 years or so, not once has it broken.
There are 2 main reasons why this is. One, they don’t roll with bleeding edge, they opt for stable, so cutting edge is more like it. And two, they don’t have something like the AUR. There is only the main repo and that’s it. The approval process for new packages is quite strict and it has to fulfil a lot of requirements, among which the software has to not just build, but also run on i686, x86_64, ARMv5/6/7 and ARM64. And not just on glibc, but also on musl. So basically, all that, times 2. Sometimes it may take up to a year to get new packages approved by the maintainers, depending on how big the package is and how integrated in the system it is.
The word “stable” usually means unchanging through a release. I.e. functionality of one release is the same if you stay in that release even if you update (security and bug fixes mostly). The experience of the system not doing anything unexpected like crashing is reliability. A rolling distro is by that definition not stable, but it can be more or less bug free and crash free.
No, it doesn’t the only unchanging distro is debian, and they do it mostly out of resourse constraints not because it is a good idea. Like the only lts package that debian does update is linux kernel. Everything else is patched for vulnerabilities at best, left to rot as stable as a rule.
A bold claim. RHEL updates are mostly security patches, are they doing that due to lack of resources too? Is it that hard to imagine that enterprise distros don’t want surprises from changing functionality?
Yes, you are correct, reliable is the term needed there 👍.
I have enough void inside me already
Alpine is better. It’s more minimal.
Yeah, but no glibc 🤷… some of us need it, and I can’t chroot all the time.
But it’s very minimal with a very small attack surface by default (because of Musl, glibc is bloated).
There is a busybox/musl version of Void as well, but iirc it’s only for use in containers, not a bootable distro. But yeah alpine is also great, I love it as well.
Plus it’s the base for the best mobile distribution (imo, obviously) PostmarketOS
Could someone remind me what the appeal behind Void is exactly?
Rolling release and stable. And no systemd… not by choice though, they’re not purists, you just can’t build it for musl.
Musl and stable is one worst word combinations there is. I still have nighmares from broken packages under alpine that worked just fine under normal distro. It took us like a week to find the problem. Bad times.
Alpine is an advanced user distro. I’m sure there are workarounds for the broken stuff.
It’s not their official policy, but my personal philosophy with alpine goes like this:
- If it doesn’t work with musl/busybox, find an alternative that does
- If I can’t find an alternative, then I patch it myself
- If I don’t have the time/skill to patch it myself, then I throw it into a container that has glibc/gnu coreutils
no systemd IIRC.
fucking runit
Haha now I kinda feel like this is Endeavour. I’m really liking Endeavour! It feels like Arch but just a bit smoother of an approachability curve. Lovely community, too.
I should mess with Void sometime. 🤔
It’s more like Arch than Endeavour though, just a heads up. Very little GUI things, especially the installer and all that. Well, the installed is TUI, so It’s not that hard to be honest.