Void Linux and why it is home
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- Today I will discuss the three main reasons why once I tried void linux I found my urge to distro-hop slowly disappeared. From the init system to the package manager, my favorite things about void linux are covered in this video.
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I wish void had more users. More people need to join in to help and keep the project going over time.
I agree, hopefully people will start to see the value in void.
I never was a distro hopper but did move from FreeBSD for work to Debian some years ago and then briefly to Arch before discovering Void, where I remain today. It's an excellent, stable, general-purpose Linux. I'm running it everywhere - a few production servers + publically reachable VMs, all my laptops and my development desktop. Oh, and on a Pi. There may be many more of us lurking out there, quiet but happy as clams, because it just keeps on working.
@@solutionroute amen to that, it is a solid distro that just works.
@@solutionroute glad to hear that. I'll have to make a minimal install and play around with my basic configs soon. Excited.
I will check it out.
Your desktop is really well done. I'm simply left in awe.
Thank you for the kind words, it took me a long time to get it how I like it.
My main is Arch, but after hopping around, I chose Void for my second machine. My configs and apps are the same, so I could interchange easily. The 2 machines gives me a degree of safety. I still feel Arch is my home, but I am very comfortable making Void my home if that was pushed. My Arch RAM at boot is about 600MB, where my Void RAM at boot up is under 200MB.
My two favorite distros as well, however in the opposite order.
I never understood the RAM argument in this day and age. I have 16 GB RAM and I think am the norm
@@Little-bird-told-me I also run 16gb so I have plenty. I am a minimalist. When it comes to ram, at boot the less it is the less services and applications are being kicked up. I want to preserve as much as I can for heavy work like compiling or processing video.
I keep to window manager rather than a full blown DE. I run TUI apps for much of my program choices. Eye candy and bloaty gui apps are kept to a minimum for me where there are other options (although my i3 experience is still pretty).
I get Linux does a great job of dropping applications in and out of cache, but boot ram is a measurement of what you don’t have running to get a live system. The lower it is at boot, the less shit I run. I run lqx kernel because it is leaner and snappier on arch than zen or stock.
Void with runit is snappy given the init is much leaner.
@@xwinglover All good. To each his own I guess. But honestly, I am more worried about my display server being XOrg or Wayland rather than my init system being systemD or runit. I am no expert, but I believe runit is most often used in containers and headless env and I once saw someone initialize runit and they did something like create a soft link (ln -s /$path) as opposed to _systemctl enable_ and that's when I stopped probing further into the void world.
Moreover, when it comes to video editing, code compilation, running games engine or neural engine the CPU cores and GPU cuda cores become more important. Heck one can even provision these service today to providers like Amazon or Google so perhaps the elephant in the room is our internet speed. Who knows.
Anyways at that point a 200 mb additional ram usage would hardly make a difference imho. But that's only me and I totally get that everyone has their own views on a bespoke env.
Btw have you noticed everyone seems to be a minimalist these days and I'd like to think I am too :)
But I also love some eye candy that's why I run Arch with Hyprland :)
@@Little-bird-told-me _systemctl enable_ literally outputs "Created symlink from x to x"
I wasn't very experienced when I switched to void and even though I had some challenges I loved it. I tried out a different distro for a bit but ended up going back in the end
It is definitely a great distro.
For different reasons, Alpine Linux, Void Linux, Gentoo, and NixOS are the distributions to settle in.
Oh and also arch linux if you want a proper bleeding edge distro
I would add to this gobo
And also MacOS Linux
I have tried void, obviously, and and currently checking out NixOS, the other two I have not tried...yet.
@@nhbknhb MacOS Linux?
Can't believe I forgot, then rediscovered, this video, being the reason to even give Void a try, over my frustration with Arch.
Been on Void for maybe a year now, love the simplicity, and elegance, of runit, and xbps. Keep up the good work :).
Thanks, void took the place of arch for me as well.
It is my main OS and I have been using it for over 2 years,runs without issues.
That's what I like, the no issues part, it has been rock solid stable for me as well.
no problems with musl compatibilty?
Void XBPS also have several flags, usually they're unneeded but pretty useful when you're building a package for Void. Also the reason Void is different from other distros because Void package manager (XBPS) also contains several *BSD OS sources. (FreeBSD and NetBSD).
I have not used any of the install flags outside of -S, the remove flags is a different story.
Slackware 15 did it for me. It reignited my desire to explore and learn more about Linux. I’m excited again about the possibilities in Linux. Void is a good distro. I ran into issues with it a few years ago and switched. Looking back on it, the real issue was more with me and where I was at than with Void. I’m running DWM with Slackware. It suits my minimalist mindset. Enjoy.
I keep telling myself to check out Slackware.
@@JakeLinux I wouldn’t recommend it. Slackware isn’t for everyone. It sounds like Void is the distro for you at this time. Stick with Void. If you are really curious, run Slackware in a VM or on another machine but don’t trash your Void install to check it out. You will regret it if you do. After watching your video, I briefly considered trying Void again and rejected the idea. I’m happy with my current setup as are you.
@@donaldmickunas8552 I am on void for the foreseeable future, that won't change, I do have a test laptop that I use to check out other distros on hardware.
@@JakeLinux 👍
@@JakeLinux If you've got a spare machine, then definitely check out Slackware. I don't know if they fixed the installer for 15, but for 14+ Current it wanted to install ELILO and that was an all around failure. I found that I needed to just pass on installing a bootloader from the installer and instead install Grub from an alternate terminal. Might've been an issue with UEFI, I don't know, but it was a pain. After I installed it with UEFI I went in and set it to legacy BIOS anyway, but just something to keep in mind.
I went ahead and installed void on my laptop tonight. Gonna use it for a few weeks and see how it goes. You are right about those boot times and I'm getting much lower ram usage so far.
Nice, let me know what you think.
howed it go
@@Thebigbean114 other than a few hiccups with flatpaks and audio it's running pretty well on my laptop ;)
you still using void?
@@epixerty yup I still got void running on my main machine. I dual boot a couple different distros but usually keep void installed.
I feel the same way. I used debian for a long time, then I tried void and I don't think I'll ever switch to anything else. I really like the simplicity: It's FAST and it WORKS. Also being able to set up a single simple encrypted zfs partition was nice, should be a default option on any linux installer in my opinion.
Nice, I think if more people tried it it would get way more coverage than it does. It is fast and simple, that's.for sure
XFS + dm-crypt is a much better choice for most purposes.
@@JodyBruchon What's the benefit of XFS + dm-crypt over native ZFS?
@@t2b1 Linux doesn't have native ZFS. Fancy filesystems aren't better. More complexity means more potential points of failure. The promises that people tout about ZFS being some kind of magic data savior are often oversimplified and lacking critical constraints, and bit rot is not nearly as big of an issue as ZFS fanboys claim. If I could post links in comments I'd link to an article I wrote years ago about ZFS but TH-cam will just auto-delete my whole comment if I do. I have a "complex systems rant" video that is relevant and easily found.
I discovered void earlier this year while looking for a fun project during a couple of weeks off of work - I wanted to explore a more minimal install, and do something with my raspberry pi. I had a lot of fun learning about Void, and I agree that XBPS is an amazing package management system (and very fast), and Runit is very easy to understand - all you have to do is create a symbolic link to the services directory for whatever service you're running and that's it. I'd try it out on my laptop (HP Dev One) but I haven't had time to research getting some of the extra keys (mic mute, etc.) working. Maybe later.
I agree, it took me a minute to get familiar with setting up a few things as well, but once I got things working there was no going back.
you def made me consider settling on void linux and i just installed it and im definitely a fan
Nice, glad you like it, void is a great distro that does not get enough love.
I'm a year late but you've convinced me to bring up a void linux on WSL tab and I've stared and forked the repo. Probably going to hop through issues next weekend to see if I can find a contributor tag item!
Never too late to discover void, it's a great distro.
After installing this on a secondary machine, it has become my daily driver. The init system is simple and boots my computer in 15 seconds, the package manager is very stable, it plays all my Steam games, and there's a lot of software available for it being a fairly unknown distro.
It is a wildly overlooked distro that deserves more love than it gets. Glad you have enjoyed it enough to make it your daily.
@@JakeLinux It feels like Arch, but more stable and with a better package manager (I really hate pacman). I wish it had something like the AUR, though.
@@pikachuchujelly7628Why do you hate pacman?
@@maaren3150 From a user perspective, it's very complicated to use and configure.
what i like about void is that the people who actually run it are somehow grounded, so even if we have the void-packages, which are a slightly more restrictive version of the AUR, things don't go overboard there, for example, if i install picom in void, i install picom, on arch i have to choose one of 48 different versions on the AUR, without any description of what makes them different from each other. the void guys are like, "you can configure picom however you want, don't be lazy, one vanilla version is enough" so instead of wasting hours trying 48 different picom version to find the one i like i'm forced to learn how picom works and at the end i have my very own and still i'm probably faster with the process but first and foremost i'm more satisfied with the result
I like the fact that they are a little more picky about what they let in the repo.
Is it really like this? Picom is in the community repo. So if you need vanilla picom always choose this over aur repos.
However if you want to try out forks, for example to have fancy animations, aurs are your friend.
With void (I guess, haven't tried it yet) you would need to read compile instructions, check for missing build dependencies and patch certain parts of the source to get these running.
Nice video Jake, glad to hear/see Void is your distro to go, mine is Bedrock Linux, a metadistro that won my heart, it's hard, but it's great.
I am excited to try that, I want to play around with it because it's such a cool idea.
I started using it few years ago and I have no plans to hop from it. (I've tried a whole lot of other distros including some like Parabola, Bodhi, many Debian based etc. etc.)
Loved OpenRC, but when I tried it, fell in love with Runit.
It is more desktop oriented vs systemd which is more server oriented.
As much as I know, it doesn't seem to log system stuff by default, so for common usage it's great, also you won't be needing much of those logs because it almost never crashes. :)
The only problem's I've had is the xbps dependencies for some packages can have issues and you might need to wait a few days for them to be fixed. For example I couldn't update my system for 2 days because of broken dependencies, but after that it just started working. Also earlier when I was doing auto remove of excess packages, it was removing my SK1 instalation by default, even though I intentionally installed it ... that problem is not present for any of the packages I have.
All in all 9.5/10 for me.
I've faced the dependency issue on update before, I just checked the waterfall and found that they were still updating and just watched for it to be finished and then updated my system, no issues after that, it has never crashed on me outside of my own doing and is rock solid, I have no plans on leaving.
Void also cured my distro hopping and I have had the best and fastest experience with it compared to arch, fedora and debian distros and those based off them. Only thing stopping me recommending it to everyone is that while I think it is beginner friendly its not quite suitable for a first time linux user.
I agree with he best and fastest experience but I do have to say I think it is suitable for a first time user because it forces you to have somewhat of an idea of what is going on.
TL;DR: Thank you for the inspiration.
Just wanted to say that after watching several of your videos I finally jumped in and tried this distribution after trying a ton of others to revive a 13 year old Thinkpad. Like you I have no particular prejudice against systemd, Wayland, etc, I just wanted something fast, not very resource intensive and stable and boy does Void fill that bill. I’m not a super technical user but didn’t find setting it up all that difficult. I also don’t have any desire to do any super geeky tweaking, I just want to get stuff done and so far I’ve been able to do that without issue. I might dive deeper at a later date, but for now I’m just happy to breath new life into old hardware and get work done.
Glad it works for you, it is a great distro with too little exposure.
Cool! Thanks for the upload! Just installed Void.
Welcome to the void! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
@@JakeLinux Thanks!
I don't understand people who want the leanest most basic system but then act apologist for systemd
I hear that. I don't have an issue with sysd personally but I know many people who do just that, everything outside of sysd must be light and have no bloat but sysd gets a pass, makes no sense to me. If there were no other options, ok, but there are plenty of good reliable options available outside of sysd.
@@JakeLinux Personally, it doesn't matter what init system I use, as long as it meshes well with the rest of the OS. Artix is fun, but I had some stumbles because certain programs were expecting SystemD instead of OpenRC. My current Void setup is part of my initial experimentation, which is i3 with LXDM, as I reserve the TTY for troubleshooting under the rubble if something goes.
I was just about to install Void on my hardware after trying it out in a VM a bit. The claims of being a stable rolling release distro seem ambitious, but if true, Void could be the answer to all my troubles with any other distro I've used so far.
In my experience with void over the past year (give or take), I have had zero breakage (except for the recent mishap of my own fault) and even zero headaches, a few hiccups on setup but other than that it has been smooth sailing. Now, my use case and system are probably completely different from yours, but it has been the smoothest operating distro I have run in my entire time on Linux.
very nice review and im now convinced void can be a used as a daily os
Thank you, void is absolutely a viable option for a daily os, I love using it.
As a side note, I don't really have anything against Void, but it would probably help newbies to Void if the documentation was included in the iso, that way if not all hardware is recognized by default, users don't have to dualboot back and forth.
I just pull up the documentation on my phone, but yes, it would be nice to have it available offline on the system itself.
I never tried void.....until now! So far I have updated the repos, installed some applications. Easy. Now I have to get samba up and running. The documentation is fine. Thanks for your void videos!!!
You're very welcome,.glad.ypu.tried it out, hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I agree. Since switching to Void almost a year ago I haven't had any reason to switch to anything else. It has been the best distro I have used. It just gets so many things right and ticks so many boxes. Not had any problems with it so far.
That is exactly how i felt after installing and using it for a daily driver, it will take a miracle to get me to change.
Thanks to you, I decided to switch from Fedora to Void and I'm not regret anything, I'm blown away about Void because is fast and everything works out of box, I manage to play all my games without any problem and also I switch from Gnome to KDE because I'm still waiting for Gnome 44 to be in the repo, I'm happy
Nice, I am running a challenge right now so I am in nixOS, I miss void, can't wait to get back.
@@JakeLinux Good luck 😊
Don't think I've used something that wasn't a fork of another distro, or wasn't based on systemd. I am really getting pumped up for this and will give it a try soon.
Nice, let me know what you think or if you have any questions
@@JakeLinux I'm running it in a VM to test so not sure if that's causing some of these issues.
Overall the package downloading is extremely slow when it works. I frequently get "failed to download libcurl-8.0.1_1 siguature connection refused" errors. Running the xbps-install command repeatedly will eventually work but the speeds are very poor. I also noticed that downloading the ISO from the Void website was very slow this morning. Maybe they are doing maintenance or something?
@@magetaaaaaa interesting, it has always been fast for me on every install, probably the fastest I've used, the only time it has been slow is when repo maintenance is happening, check the void dev waterfall and see if there is a package build that is having issues.
I also faced the same, i had found that Void fit me very well and cured my distro-hopping for years.
Now i am on KISS Linux.
You are officially the first person I have heard that uses kiss. What drew you to kiss over other distros?
@@JakeLinux because it gives me freedom. void maintainers were a pain to deal with.
Which font are you using? Look's by far the best I have seen! Can you make 1 video on fonts ??
I currently use fantasque sans mono for my font. I would be happy to make a video but what would you like me to cover about fonts?
@@JakeLinux First of all thanks 🙏. You can cover about different fonts, which are best for programmers and having ligatures and which do you think is best for daily use and programming stuffs.
wow your desktop looks so amazing!!
Thank you, I appreciate that.
what a nicely configured therminal that is
Thank you, I appreciate that.
ima give void ago!
edit: I love it and im no longer distro hopping
It's a great distro, took a little getting used to but after I used it for a while, there was no going back.
I used to run Void on my Asus netbook that had just 2GB RAM. It was faster and more efficient on RAM usage compared to other light weight ubuntu based distros. The only issue I had was with sound. Void did not come pre packaged with as many drivers as say Linux Mint or ubuntu.
Audio seems to be the common issue people face with void,.
Good to know.
I just finished installing void, i have been distro hopping between artix and gentoo for the last week. Hopefully, I will find VoidLinux to be the one
Artix is a great distro, I am temporarily on it right now, Gentoo I have very little experience with. I will be back on void soon. I just haven't found it's equal for my personal use.
Great video as usual, Jake. I have fond memories of herbsluftwm from back in the day (around 2008-2010).
Thank you, what do you use now?
This video didn't need to be 12 minute long at all.
His reasons:
1. Apparently runit runs quicker than SystemD so he says it boots quicker than any distro with systemd
2. Package management system XBPS, he just likes it. Can't justify what makes it better than others though.
3. He forgot to mention any third.
His challenges:
1. Doc not as good as Arch. Is not as comprehensive.
Thanks for watching even though it was a bit long, and thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it, good or bad.
True, you are correct, probably could have been shorter, I tend to ramble and talk slow.
The "reasons" are my personal preferences as to why I like it, not why it is better than other distros overall, that is each person's opinion, not my call to make. like I said in the video I think distro doesn't matter until you find the one you like and these are the reasons I like void.
To clarify my reasons are:
1) boot speed
2) how you set up services
3) package manager
Thanks for watching,.even if you didn't enjoy it or get anything out of it.
@@JakeLinux I like the ramblings of an experienced person. You learn a lot. Especially in a world where everyone has black and white opinions it's good to hear a graybeard discuss why distros and init systems are not all that important. Helps keep things centered around the big picture. I also watched this while eating breakfast, so not in need for a quick answer.
@loribolognini thanks, I appreciate that. I'm glad you enjoy it.
imperatively timing commands into a terminal to set up your machine is antiquated at this point now that Guix and Nix exist
I don't know if I agree, I enjoy the process of setting up my system manually, not quite as much as I used to but it is still enjoyable to me.
I was not aware of Void Linux until watching your video. I switched to using MX Linux (I prefer Debian bases distros) a couple of years ago for similar reasons that keeps you on Void. MX like Void does not use SystemD by default but uses the old tried and true SystemV init system. When you install MX Linux you are given the option to use SystemD if you want. I have been using Linux off and on since 1997 where I dual booted between Red Hat and windows 95. The reason I like the SystemV init system is because even though I am not a developer I learned how this init system worked and how to use it. I am an avid gamer and when running Linux even though there were not many Linux games I still liked to run the latest Nvidia drivers. Using the traditional init system you could easily use a terminal log in as root (back then sudo had not been invented) and enter init3. This would kill the X Server and you would be in a terminal screen. I think you had to log in as root, then navigate to where you had stored the Nvidia driver tarball and compile a new kernel module that contained the newest Nvidia driver. Once this was completed you just typed in the terminal init5. This launched the X Server where you were greeted by the normal login for your distro. The other great thing that SystemV init does easily, perhaps the other systems can but I do not know how to use them is if you have an application that hangs up your system most of the time all you have to do is to hit the F2 key (I think this is the correct F key) and the SystemV init would launch a terminal where you could attempt to kill the misbehaving process. If that was unsuccessful you could make sure that any other running programs data was saved. Then you just enter init3 killing the X Server then after loging in as root enter init 5.
I have played around in MX a bit, I liked it it is a great distro, thanks for all the info on the init sys.
@@JakeLinux Though I did not mention it the reason I prefer distros based in Debian is there are far more packages in Debian. Also Debian has three levels of oversight of the software packages. I can't remember the name of the first level but this is where a new package is analyzed to make sure there is no malware then it is moved into the second level called the testing branch. Once a package passes Debians stability standards the package is then moved into their stable branch. This is also one of the main criticisms of vanilla Debian because most of the software is several versions old. The reason I like MX Linux is they give you the freedom to choose which init system to use as well as they make it easy to add Debians testing repository as well as adding Flatpacks and Snaps packages.
I don't see a need to use System V init when modern init systems like runit, OpenRC, (and yes, systemd) are easier to maintain and follow dependency trees and can run in parallel for faster boot times.
@@pikachuchujelly7628 I suspose that you did not read my entire post. I gave a detailed reason why I personally prefer system V. I also clearly stated in my post that I am not a developer. You mention several newer init systems as being far better than the old System V mainly because they are easier to maintain and they bood faster. I am not an elite dev so I could care less about their development. Did you read the main reason why I prefer System V? If you use System D can you easily kill the X server from user space so you can compile a new Nvidia GPU driver on a running system and then simply restart the X server without having to reboot? I have asked this specific question on several forums that never received a reply. I doubt that using System D you are able to do this task. System D is far too complicated because the developers violated the basic guidelines that in the past were over arching principals used in creating Unix utilities that being KISS! (keep it simple stupid). The vast majority of utilities were simple and focused on doing one thing. INIT V does this, it only does one thing, initialize the system to boot the kernel. It uses a straight forward easily followed series of run levels that makes use of open easily followed plain text configuration files. If you are setting up a server most do not install an X server so on a System V system you only need to utilize run level 3. On a System d system can you easily recover from a graphical application that has frozen and caused the GUI to become
unresponsive like a running a game that is not coded correctly without rebooting? On a System V init system if I remember correctly you can press the f2 key that will bring up terminal window. Then you can simply log in as root and type in the init 3 command. This kills the X Server by going into run level 3 that does not support X Servers and GUIs. Then from the terminal you then just type in the init 5 command. Doing this restarts the X Server without doing a reboot. System d is a monolithic closed beast that is a take it or leave it approach. It does far more than initializing the system to boot, it takes over all scheduling tasks as well as many other things that in the past were handled by other simple utilities non of which were hard dependencies. If you had the option of only using System d for boot I would have no objection to using it, however this is not possible. From my position I have tried to understand what and how System d was doing things but Since I already learned how System V works I will continue to use Linux distros that still believe in freedom. I could not believe that several more popular desktop environments like Gnome and Kde have system d as hard dependency. If system d is not running their software simply will not instal. It is obvious that far too many devs from the Microsuck realm have infected Linux. To me System d is a lot like the damn Windows registry. Like the registry System d is intentionally closed with no plain text configuration files as well as being overly complex that defies the average user from understanding what it is doing.
@@robertbacklund4438 I meant easier to maintain for the end user, not the developer. Runit has a nice folder structure and uses symlinks to enable/disable services, and it's very easy to see what's going on. I don't particularly like systemd either and have some of the same complaints that you have (binary log files, complex configuration), but you may want to give the other init systems like runit and OpenRC a try. They are both plain text, have rather simple directory structures that are easy to grasp (just like sysv), while also having modern features like parallel startup.
Well void for me has been a blast, I mostly use Linux for basic uses, gaming etc. I've updated to 6.0 and change the repos to one closer to where I live.
Glad to hear, void does not seem to get the coverage it deserves, it is a great dostro
Jake i love your alacritty settings in this video! Colors and all! Any chance you can share your config?
I will double check but I believe my alacrity config and bashrc are up to date (for that video, not my current scheme) in my git repos.
Just starting to watch the video. How can I make neofetch to look like yours? (looked up your dotfiles repository on github but I didn't find it). I'm going to continue with the video....
I will push it to my repo.
@@JakeLinux Thanks! Great video, BTW.
run it also allows for user level services, which I found to be one of the better features of systemd
Took me a bit to figure it out but it is a nice feature.
i haven't tried void yet!, but i do have some experience with sv in termux, its super easy to create & run services. sv up for life!
What distro do you run?
My reasons are runit and just works. Never installed my os faster than with void linux. Takes like 15 secs. Then install dwm in about 1 minute. Done.
I am surprised by the amount of issues people have when installing void, I had 1 issue the first attempt, then it is clear sailing after that.
Non system D inits are definitely fast but I just tested my machine with Intel i7-7500u and it opened RHEL 9 in only a few seconds so not sure if this is the use-case to justify switching. I also had some audio and random issues with void as other users did. Compared to debian or RHEL/alma/rocky where you almost never have to update packages, I prefer stable distros now.
I would not have switched strictly because of boot speed, it is a big plus for me but like I have said, I have had no real beef with systems, the overall experience with void is what ultimately drew me to switch.
Also installing bedrock linux on Void can give easy way to mix up the stuff from other distributions. Generally, I use void for its fast runit and arch from bedrock to have some aur stuff.
I want to give bedrock a try it is an interesting concept and I would like to see it in action.
Subscribed with bell on, and followed on Odysee with bell on.
Welcome! Thanks, I greatly appreciate it
I personally don't see how arch has good docs, I tried installing it and it didn't have instructions for how to do even a basic partitioning setup. I get everyone's system is different and they can't just say that this is the one way to do it that's the correct way, but I had to go to a different site to even learn how the tools worked and couldn't find any sites in my admittedly short search that gave any instructions on how to actually make a basic partition setup. Now maybe it's a skill issue, I've never had to partition a disk myself before, never heard of these tools before, never needed to care, but they should at least give you a little info even if it's on a different part of the wiki with a link to it like they do with some other things
Took me a minute to see how good it actually is, just have to follow links, like in the install instructions, when you get to partitioning, it tells you to partition you disk and then gives a link to different tools that can do that job for you, once you click that link, and follow the instructions on the partition tool page, you go back to the main install instructions and continue on. It reduces redundancy in the documentation. When compared to other distros documentation, arch is hands down one of the best.
I feel the same way about Fedora, it's home for me.
Fedora is all over right now, quite popular, I might have to try it sometime.
I'm going to Void Linux as well (I'm a Linux Mint user now..But I used many distros incl. Arch).
Mint was my introduction to Linux, cinnamon desktop is by far my favorite full DE.
I wish that xbps-src had more -git packages like arch does in the AUR. I need the git version of polybar until the next release :(
I used Void for a while on a Lenovo T470s laptop. I was impressed on the whole (particularly with xbps) but the startup time was dismal. Arch started much faster with Systemd. I'm now running GNU-Guix on the same laptop with Shepherd as the init system. Again it's much slower on startup than Arch/systemd. Likewise I found that Arch booted much faster on my HP desktop setup than Guix. I would still choose Void over Arch since I prefer the package management system, but I'm disappointed with Systemd alternatives like Runit and Shepherd on the whole.
Interesting, I've never tried going guix. Runit has booted faster than sysd on everything I have tried it on personally. No beef here with sysd just prefer runit.
@@JakeLinux Yeah I've noticed that lots of people swear by runit and find it much faster than systemd. Perhaps it's just down to which hardware you use, or perhaps I need to look further into configuration options.
Regarding your concerns on documentation, the Void Linux docs state that they are not intended to be as complete as the Arch Wiki and explicitly say that the Void docs only cover things specific to Void. For everything else just use Arch Wiki, which normally applies to Void too. (literally written on page 2 of the docs "About this handbook". Sometimes reading is a great skill ;) )
Heck, I even shared my dot files and a lot of etc files when moving from Arch to Void, and things just worked.
And yeah, Void rocks big time. Runit is super stable, system updates never went wrong for the last two years, I do not miss a single package, xbps-src is miles ahead of AUR, the list goes on and on. As long as Void continues this way, I will never jump ship again.
Yeah, should have been more clear, my argument was not to say they need to change the documentation, it was merely to point out that it is not as comprehensive as arch wiki, whether that is by intention or not.
I'm with you, as long a void keeps doing what they are doing as well as they are doing it, I'm staying along for the ride.
what i love about void linux is it's simplicity and snappiness. never have i seen any other linux distro yet that mimics the same snappy behavior of void linux. it's desktop/windows/mouse rendering are somehow vsynced out of the box. it's very noticeable esp at high refresh rates. window dragging, even dragging a browser playing 4k60 youtube video is very smooth and does not show any screen tearing... that and with minimal memory and cpu utilization makes me like this OS more.. even more than windows.
I tried Void once a few years ago. I remember liking it in general, but I wasn't able to get printing set up and so I and left Void behind.
You mentioned services failing to start on systemd. Interestingly enough, I ran into this for the first time over the weekend. I think it might be time for me to give Void a second look.
I would recommend it, again, I have nothing against arch or systemd, I just found void and runit to be better and more stable on my machine.
You should try nixOS, your content is great keep up the good work!
I am trying it out as we speak. Thank you, I appreciate that.
I'm looking for a distro that will ensure long battery life, fit neatly into 2GB RAM, and feature the latest Linux kernel. Besides WattOS R12, I'm considering VoidOS with LXDE, or maybe even Tiny Core Plus.
I've never heard of wattOS and I have never used tiny core, but I know my battery life is pretty decent on void, a lot of battery issues come from background processes or scripts, so if you monitor those, void should be great.
Great video thank you very much. Can you depend on it as you daily use OS. I am thinking to remove windows for ever, and neve go back.
Thanks, and you're welcome! I have been using it as my daily driver for about a year now, with no issues whatsoever.
I've moved in february from windows to biglinux. After a week i felt i was never going back to windows.
About Two weeks ago i instaled void in a test machine, to me its a great distro which i would gladly use daily. I had some minor problems with It but not because of void i think its me(novice user).
For now i instaled the i686 in a Samsung np150-plus netbook. Wifi card doenst work eventough other things doing good. I Hope to solve this problem with a usb-wifi-stick.
Now i feel the desire to change my main machine to void eventough biglinux is a ready to use distro.
What is keeping me off is doing a back-up and maybe Messing the sound and wi-fi.
I spent about 10 years with slackware, liked it better than red hat or fedora at the time. It worked but as time went on, I found myself instaling from scrip a lot and left me chasing dependency that left the install unstable. Moving on, a friend had me try mint and did not like it. It was to much hand holding and not much control over how it was set up, also the wm provided was too candy coated. Manjaro seemed easy to try and came with kde, so gave that a shot. I tryed to like it for a few years but would end up bricking it. Never got used to the package manager and always found pacman to be more useable, more in how Im used to. Using yaourt is where the problem would arise, since could easly install a package too new for manjaro ment for arch.
So I have been using arch for the past 7 years and dont have a lot of complaints, it works and took a bit to learn how to install it. I made a bash script to install it, so I dont have to remember what I did to get it to work. I use lxqt as the wm, it works like kde3 and is short the bloat of plasma. My only grip is the aur packages, some them change source, some dont last and other are a bit big to build often.
Was looking around seeing what distros could be stabe long term like slackware, I am thinking about setting up a diskless system to run linuxcnc and seeing options. That is not why Im here tho, this void distro cought my eye. I see it can do partial updates for bug fix and patches, over the full install of package that arch dose. Say for ungoogled chromium that I use as my main browser, it takes to long to build and have to resort too a 3rd party prebuilt binary. I see DAINRA has build scrip on git for it and my question is, with void would I still be left with long build times with ever update?
I have yet to have any long update or build times on void, updates are easy and fast, at least in my experience on my system.
Thanks for the video, Jake! It was like you responded to my question. I am going to check it out on my phone. Believe it or not it is a arm processor with 8 2ghz cpus., 6gb of ram and 128gb of storage. Cpu fetch says that its cpu is capable of outrunning my 2011 mac mini running mx linux, by 15 gflops (60 total). Im gonna use it casted to my tv with a bluetooth keyboard. Termux's proot-distro command is pretty cool. Allowing me to check out about 11 different distros in my android mobile device. Gonna try to root my other samsung tablet and compare/contrast the two. Check risk versus reward of rooting,etc. Your endorsement of Void peaked my interest and i downlloaded it , we shall soon see by getting a 'taste' of the void. On the other hand, if you haven't tried alpine, you should . Especially with computers with limited resources. Alpine loads the entire os with less than 11mb and the entire inital system is less than 30mb. it is super fast, since the entire os is in memory. I think it will be my os of choice on android. Give it a try , the syntax incredibly simple and remonicent of debian. You howeverare on your own if there is a problem when trying to get help from the distro. The community and the wiki are very good. it is bare bones and uses busybox in the core. I got a gui running hltm pretty easily Give it a try, if you haven't already. Im probably clueless and you know about it already.
I have heard of alpine but never tried it, will have to give it a shot. Your question was the catalyst for finally making this video, kept putting it off until you asked so I figured no time like the present.
@@JakeLinux Thanks again
Yo ! I just set this wallpaper to my laptop yesterday and now i got this recommendation in yt .
TH-cam and google now scares me..
They are watching you ; )
I've never been able to install void, can't remember the first few reasons it failed but the last time I tried it didn't detect my SSD partitions. Something about following the ncurses install, when you get to the partitions it wouldn't detect the / partition so I couldn't proceed, I would have had to go back and just use a single partition for /boot, / and /home for it to work. I might check it out in the future again but it's still bugged.
That's weird, I never had that issue, they have made some changes in the latest update that apparently fixed the user permissions issue when installing, maybe they addressed your issue as well, not sure if others were seeing the same thing or not.
I've had Void in the back of my mind for a while now. I'll get around to it, one of these days! 🙂
What's the browser you're running?
That's just Firefox with a custom theme.
@@JakeLinux ta for that. 🙂
I started on Redhat back in 96 and was on that until the late 2000s' and then switched to Gentoo for another 10 years and most of the time it was good and fast but then.... then when the time came to upgrade packages (emerge!), it could get into a situation where eventually the dependencies of the entire system were so broken that you were faced with either living with the current version of a package or not being able to install a package or completely reinstall the entire system... It might take 2 years or maybe 3, but sooner or later that was the outcome... (Redhat and RPMs could also self destruct a system too!), so I got fed up with it and used Mint for the last 5 years but Mint is bloated and when I started looking for a replacement, I wanted one that did not use systemd and Devuan and Void both looked good. I chose Void since it seemed be the most minimal.
Knowing what you know, would you be more apt to recommend fedora or Gentoo? Just curious, void is home for me.
@@JakeLinux I'd never go back to Gentoo after the multiple times of OS self decay and destruction due to the flawed package management handling of (system) dependencies. I have no opinion on Fedora. For me, Void is good. It is not bloated and as you mentioned, the package manager performs well. FYI: The (supposed) attraction of Gentoo was that when you installed or updated a package it compiled it from source, so you'd get code optimized for the processor you are running on and with the correct system flags set, you could control what features would be compiled in or not. This sounds good but in my opinion, this is part of what causes the system to break beyond reasonable repair. Maybe they have improved this since I last used it 5 years ago... Maybe not!
I also thought void would stop my distro hoping, and it did for a while, until I just couldnt fix the audio problems I was having, as much as I liked void, it was void or clean guitar recordings, so void had to go :(
I have some minor audio issues that need to be worked out but I am not recording music so I can see why this is a bigger issue for you than me.
Hopped to Void this September after that infamous Arch Grub issue. System works just well but it took me some time how to figure out making packages in xbps-src using Clang/LLVM. Is it me or in xbps linkage process is much faster than anywhere else? Also I'm not a fan of cloning the entire set of templates.
Cloning all the templates was a bit much for me at first too, but it isn't so bad, could try to do only the ones you want but that makes extra work and I tend to be a little lazy.
@@JakeLinux Of course I don't clone everything every time I make a package. But if there appears a newer version of some dependency I have to 'xbps-query' the new version and change its number manually in its template. Doesn't happen all the time but if you haven't done it for a while there's a big chance of it. Updating the repo reverts my changes.
I also have to write 'clang llvm lld' in the hostmakedepends in every new package I compile. A bit worse than just writing a CC/CXX flag like in pacman's makepkg.conf but this is made by design. Including 'clang' in some list of my own necessary packages would help but maybe I haven't figured out something yet.
Love that background, where can I find it?
I can't remember where I found it but it is in my herbst git repo.
@@JakeLinux Thanks!
I feel the same as you when I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon! But I'm, looking for something lite for an old friend's laptop...
That was my first experience with Linux, mint is a great distro and cinnamon is by far my favorite fully loaded DE.
I innstalled LMDE Cinnamon on an Atom with 2 GB RAM 32 bit with an SSD. Works good. Maybe I will try installling XFCE too and if better performance than I could log on to the XFCE desktop. If your friend has 64 bit CPU than also Tuxedo OS is good!
This is also the reason someone in my country choose to construct his own distro, forked it to VoidLinux, using KDE Plasma, and focusing repository for fullfill creative worker needs . Now i'm using it and i think I'm fine to full~switch from Windows OS, you can check 'langitketujuh os' consider you interested VoidLinux based distro.
I will check that out, thanks for sharing.
I distro hop too much. Like most I went through Ubuntu > Mint > Debian > Endeavour OS (plus some odd distros that looked interesting). I am considering a proper Arch install, and now Void :). I came to realize that all the hopping was hampering my learning of GNU Linux. I just want something that runs fast on a mediocre laptop, and looks good at the same time. I can relate to your reasons for your choice of Void.
I'm on the fence when it comes to distro-hopping, I think it is valuable in some respects and hurtful in others. Void was the first distro that I used that I hate leaving, even for short periods make distro reviews for the channel.
Believe me or not, but I started my linux journey from void a few years ago. That time plasma5 was issued and I managed to run it on void just doing copy/paste some commands. Void was fast and light. But later I installed a bunch of applications on it. Then void became about the same as any other Linux.
It might be more reliable than arch. It is difficult to compare. But definitely not so predictable, solid and reproducible as NixOS.
I am playing around with NixOS at the moment for a challenge and it is different than any other distro I have used, it's kind of kicking my butt at the moment.
I run void and nix with home-manager on both my machines. In particular I enjoy this configuration on my old but gold netbook eeepc. Small, long battery life and overall fast with void. Cherry picking the applications as light as possible is still more than usable.
@@JakeLinux I also was using nixos for quite a while, but after a motherboard replacement, for some reason keyboard and touchpad no longer worked on some distros (nixos included), and the only place where it was working was arch which is strange, on a thinkpad P14s btw)
To focus on one point you made:
I’m not sure SystemD would be industry standard if services just stopped running.
Are you sure those failed services were installed in the way SystemD & Linux FHS were designed to keep around and running even after updates?
I am not blaming sysD, I have said before that it was probably something on my end, and not with sysD, I don't have any beef with systemD, I'm not a sysD hater, I didn't switch to get away from sysD, I just prefer runit after using it, in my opinion it is easier, and I personally have not had the issues I had with systemD, I'm not saying those issues were systemD's fault, I'm just saying there were issues that have not occurred on runit.
@@JakeLinux
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Whoaaa, 🫨 let’s drop the references to hating on sysD. I agree, you’re not. 👍
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What I see is a gap in the sysD documentation. 🤔
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From your experience I detect an issue with the documentation, and I’m asking about your use of the system as a proxy. It’s not enough to be well written. It matters that the code it’s well executed on.
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“A well designed tool requires less of a manual.” - me
Yeup, that’s a quote I made up, for clarity.
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I look at documentation as a multi-medium publication. There’s the manual and then there’s the public speaking or tutorials - of which I don’t see much. The only in-depth presentation I found on YT was published from 5+ years ago.
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It’s SystemD that dropped the ball, not you.
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I could attempt designing a near drag-n’-drop for configuring SystemD. But atm I couldn’t code it, not today.
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I’m still learning how to write bash scripts using flags using your three part series. I just finished part three today tinkering with my own script to re-vamp interacting with dmidecode.
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What I like about SystemD is the built in error-checking. FirewallD checks for errors in ways ufw will not. Ufw facilitates errors in the firewall that could bring the whole thing down leaving a host seriously exposed. (Well, that’s what I recall from what the ITProTV guys said.)
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FirewallD helps by preventing misconfigurations,
so with you, how did sysD not prevent those issues?
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See - that’s what I’m wanting to learn. One day, I might have scripted or coded an improvement on presenting sysD to people such as yourself and me.
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And if you’re talking to the runit developers, perhaps through you they be motivated to keep publishing tutorials and long form presentations - even after they think they documented it well enough.
@@JakeLinux
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I recommend these videos:
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The Tragedy of Systemd. (positive & technical’ish)
th-cam.com/video/o_AIw9bGogo/w-d-xo.html
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The drama around Systemd examined.
th-cam.com/video/dz-M5cVUy_M/w-d-xo.html
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Here’s a playlist i used to get introduced to SystemD. I’m not saying you need it, I’m showing you what I learned on. When I decided to learn Linux, I decided to jump deep in. Reading the manual or ArchWiki was too overwhelming.
This playlist helped.
th-cam.com/play/PLtK75qxsQaMKPbuVpGuqUQYRiTwTAmqeI.html
@@apolloapostolos5127 thanks, I'll check those out.
Your terminal prompt is very cool.
How is Herbsleurieru wm compared to i3?
Thank you, my prompt was a work in progress for a long time. Herbst and i3 are similar but for me Herbst is just more configurable and simple, i3 is nice but I pick Herbst every day of the week.
i used void for 5 years, said everything the host said but ultimately left because I got tired of the rolling model breaking stuff. I was on Fedora for awhile for fresh kernels with new enough packages but now I am on Manjaro. I've been around the block since 2007 and have given almost every distro a college try. Manjaro broke on me back when it was early in development but now days I get to have new stuff with much more testing and many more packages than Void. Also I get to use the Arch wiki. That said, I want Runit and xbps on Manjaro, Systemd stop and start jobs are rage levels of annoying. yes I have edited the system.conf. Stop jobs can die in a fire.
I used Manjaro between my time on mint and my time in vanilla arch, it was a good distro. It's funny people talk about breakage on rolling releases, I only had arch issues once or twice, and I have not had a single breakage on void, at least not one that wasn't my own fault. I'm not trying to say you're wrong, everyone's experience is different, but for me void has been rock solid. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate your insight.
@@JakeLinux I didn't have true breakages from void in an update sense, just misconfigured packages and little annoyances here and there. Fixing configs and the like just became something I couldn't be bothered to do when all I wanted to do was use the computer. I'm just getting old now. Side note, I still run my void builds service for nightly builds if you ever find the official images out of date. I got sick of stale builds so I did something about it and added quality of life packages to boot. I won't post the link unless you are interested (it feels dirty posting links randomly).
@@silvernode no way I've been across your website! super helpful stuff
Great video Jake.
Thank you very much, I appreciate that.
can you do a tutorial on how you set up those fzf menus? a link would be just as good too
I’ve never moved on from Debian testing.
Also, everybody uses arch wiki regardless of distro.
I’m currently on qtile and loving it after using i3 for the last 4 years.
I’ve been using Debian Sid since 2002. I’ve installed others, but most often all my machines run Sid, and I’ve never had no machines running Sid. This is the first video I’ve seen by this person, but I’m surprised he didn’t mention Debian in his journey. Has he not used it?
I have not used vanilla debian for a daily driver, the closest thing I have used is Mint, I have used debian in a VM, I am curious about Sid and will give it a go at some point.
Qtile is a great WM, it will be on my top 5 WM video in the near future. I agree arch wiki is the main go-to for info for a lot of people, regardless of what they run on their machine.
@@peepingThomist ever have stability issues?
I’ve had a few minor ones with testing, but it’s never been unusable. I use it as my daily driver both at home and at work.
Other than the package management system what advantages did you find Void has over Artix with runit? I'm currently using Artix and really enjoying it but I could be swayed to another distro if the arguments for it are good enough.
The devs are great communicators, and actually care about stability.
@@nevoyu So fewer breakages with Void? I might switch over and check it out. Thank you.
@@nemonada3501 something that is entirely personal but i think void's bsd like package manager using multiple binaries is much better than pacman bacause it is much simpler to remember what command is needed for what functionality. Also you can run multiple operations at tge same time like query while updating or installing one thing while removing another
Stability would be the biggest, I didn't know that when I installed it to check it out, and I was not looking for something more "stable" since I only had a few issues in the entirety of my arch usage.
It's either Gentoo, void or artix.
Still have to try Gentoo, it's on the list.
I "liked" void linux. I was trying to use it as a daily driver but it had some issues mainly audio. I could not get it working properly and when i did it working by going through a bunch of reddit and void troubleshooting audio articles, it still had some minor problems. If it wasn't for this i would still be using void but now i am back on artix. Also i wouldn't mind if void got a better looking/ cleaner logo as well.
Also what is the name of the vm launher you are using?
I had some minor audio issues with void at first but they were quickly resolved. I don't have great audio in general because I use my laptop for everything and just use the onboard mic but it works overall until I can find time and money to make myself a desktop setup.
I like the void logo, it has always been one of my favorites, but that's personal preference.
The VM launcher is a couple of scripts I wrote, you can find them in my scripts repo on GitHub or gitlab, they work great but I am still working on them to automatically add newly added VMs to the list when they are created.
@@JakeLinux could you let me know what you did to resolve your audio issues? I want to tryout void linux again.
I'm very curious, what is this script you use to search for the void-packages? Is this up on your GitHub?
my favorite distro
Mine as well.
if general computing and not gaming was my priority i'd be on void for sure. really enjoyed my time on it.
and why are you rebuilding your system from scratch when you hop? just make a timeshift backup and reapply when you want to go back to it.
I always rebuilt because that was the fun part for me, doing it all over again, changing the things that I did not like or using different programs, now I want to one and done, I don't even particularly like the install process, I just want my system up and going with little to no issues, and that is what void has given me. I probably could accomplish the same on any other distro, void just has the package management, init sys, and community that I enjoy.
Void Linux is extremely low end friendly and they had got almost everything what other distros dont. Sadly they still don't have many users. :(
That's why I am doing what I can to bring void some love, it's a great distro that people just either ignore or don't know much about.
Hi Jake! are you still using envy x360 laptop? or something else now?
Hello! No I am actually on a Lenovo ideapad currently and may be switching to a new.laptop in a few months.
If you are looking for distros that are doing something different I would suggest gobo. It is wired but very interesting. Unfortunately it is not popular and a lot of packages are outdated
Never heard of it, will check it out.
Please make a video on Void source packages.
Sure, what would you like to see, how to install and implement them? Or is there something else?
@@JakeLinux yes, I want to see how to install and implement them.
To address the last point:
alias pci="sudo pacman -Sy --noconfirm"
alias pcr="sudo pacman -Runs --noconfirm"
alias pcs="pacman -Ss"
alias pcq="pacman -Qi"
alias yi="yay -Sy --noconfirm"
alias yr="yay -Runs --noconfirm"
alias yq="yay -Qi"
alias yl="yay -Qdt"
Yes, as I said in the video, you can alias commands to make it easier for you, which is fine and works well, but I prefer not to alias important commands, like package management commands, because if I am ever on someone else's system, my aliases are not going to be there, so my preference is to use the actual command. That doesn't mean other people shouldn't use aliases, I just don't like to. Thanks for your input, I appreciate the engagement.
Gentoo cured mine after years of Arch.
Still love Arch, but my binary days are behind me.
Nice, Gentoo is interesting, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and try it out, someday I will.
@Jake@Linux No rush if you're happy on Void. Could be fun in a VM or dual-boot though, and offer some YT content. But there is some research phase beforehand to understand the Gentoo way of doing things. Shouldn't be hard for a Void user though.
distribution doesn't matter is exactly why void is so good. it just gets out of the way.
Agreed
My experience with the arch community was the same, I asked my first question there, got ridiculed, and I will never touch arch ever again. I would gnaw my own leg off before I'll ever use arch for anything.
The arch community is a fickle one, there are a lot of good, helpful people on there but unfortunately the loudmouth rude folks tend to drown them out.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that! hopefully you come around and see arch as just a distribution and ignore the rude part of the arch community.
@@myfavouritecolorisgreen no thank you arch is dead to me. I use mint for everything.
Why do people feel that startup time is important? I reboot my laptop maybe three to four times a year after big updates.
To a lot of people like yourself it is not important, to others like me who start up more often, speed is important.
@@JakeLinux understood. But why do you restart often? Security? Especially old hardware? Can't think of anything else, and these are not too widespread, IMHO
Because we just love seeing it go faster, either we need it to run immediately.
So why not remove unnecessary services and reduce resource usage?
@@user-pc4i8ege55 no, I have had issues in with screen freezing or keyboard not coming back up after suspend or hibernate so I just started shutting down completely, I know it is not the most efficient or best way to handle the issue but I got tired of fighting it so for now I things this way. Once I finally fix the issues, boot time won't be a big deal but for now, I like a speedy boot.
@@JakeLinux fair enough. Good luck fixing the issues!
Perfect distro, also alpine is VEERRRY NICE , but i prefer void
I really like Void-Linux, but xbps is not as good as something like Yay or Amethyst in my opinion. For exemple, i have to update discord when it need it, but sources pkgs are not up to date as fast as it need, so i have to modify the template, validate the checksum etc... Paackage manager such as Yay, Amethyst, or even Pacman are way easier to use for that
I agree with that point, about the ease of updates, but being on the latest and greatest of anything has not been an issue for me, yet. As long as I can get the programs running that I want to use I am good.
Void got that arch minimalism with hipster cred
Ouch, hipster, that's rough.
Some of us just have to be different 🤷🏾♂️😂💯
Agreed, nothing wrong with standing out and being different.
You should seriously consider installing xtools, it'll make package management so much smoother.
Want to search for a package? xrs pkgname
Want to install a package? xi pkgname - no sudo required
Want to see the files in a package? xls pkgname
Want to find a package containing a file? xlocate filename
... And many more
I have xtools installed, I just created my script before really learning about xtools so I have been using that, nothing against xtools I just have not switched to using it.
I wish mongodb was available in the void repos. I would have definitely made the switch. 😢
5:54 : 'I think you're going to be hard-pressed to find a distribution with documentation as well done as Arch Linux.'
Ever heard of FreeBSD?