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What is the motivation for supporting MIPS here? I can't think of a single system that runs MIPS instructions. Also, what does this distro do differently from
by cgb223 9y ago
What is the motivation for supporting MIPS here?
I can't think of a single system that runs MIPS instructions.
Also, what does this distro do differently from the other 1000+ distos?
Why VOID? Why not something else?
- lmz 9y agoCheap wireless routers?
- nialv7 9y agoFor one, VOID has a unique package management system [1]. [1]: https://www.voidlinux.eu/usage/xbps/ https://www.voidlinux.eu/usage/xbps/
- cwyers 9y agoWhy is that a good thing? There's network effects to package managers. Using one of the common ones is beneficial.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoIt's very easy to write templates for new packages and the maintainers stay really busy, so I've found that void has more packages in the main repo than almost anything else, despite its lesser popularity.
- da02 9y agoI'm guessing they looked at other package managers, didn't like a bunch of decisions, and decided to write their own: XBPS claims it's totally compatible with POSIX/SUSv2/C99 standards, and released with a Simplified BSD license (2 clause). Other features: https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/XBPS#Features https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/XBPS#Features
- PrimHelios 9y agoFrom what I've read, Void was created as a testing distro for XBPS before it was merged into a BSD. Might be wrong on that though.
- daptaq 9y agoI don't think any *BSD uses xbps - sadly.
- PrimHelios 9y agoHuh, I guess not. Strange, I could've sworn I read somewhere that was the case.
- feelin_googley 9y agoIt is written somehwere that this was the motivation for creating this Linux distribution. The author wanted to work on his own package manager. What makes this "distro" more interesting than all the others IMHO is that the author is a former BSD committer.
- KGIII 9y agoNo systemd. Some folks will appreciate that.
- sddfd 9y agoGentoo also doesn't force systemd.
- kogepathic 9y agoDevuan also, although their initial release took ages...
- krylon 9y agoWell, Debian has been known to take their time with releases, as well. One might say the Devuan developers just uphold an honored tradition. ;-) (Just to be clear, the resulting releases have - for me at least - usually been worth waiting for.)
- tyingq 9y agoA very large number of home routers run Broadcom MIPS processors.
- userbinator 9y agoNot just Broadcom, but plenty of other networking SoCs use MIPS --- and in big-endian mode too. They're probably the only commonly encountered BE systems today.
- _pmf_ 9y ago> They're probably the only commonly encountered BE systems today. Freescale's embedded PowerPC (e500 et. al) controllers are used in automotive powertrain ECUs (those that do not use TriCore), though it's debatable whether this counts as common.
- tyingq 9y agoIBM mainframes are big endian. You might say commonly encountered, depends on what circles you run in.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoIt's basically what people imagine arch as (minimal), with a BSD influence, and it's modern and supported. If you've gotten addicted to Free/OpenBSD, it might make linux palatable to you.
- da02 9y agoI was drawn to it because it doesn't use systemd. (There seem to be a lot of people who dislike systemd.) Void uses runit instead of systemd. This has made it (for me at least) easier to use than Arch/systemd. It was also one of the first to adopt LibreSSL. The main downside for me is I have to manually install browsers. Void's packages for desktop software is sometimes out-of-date. But, I'm willing to overlook it because of all the other positives.
- nine_k 9y ago(Writing this from a Void Linux installation:) I don't know about Chromium, but Firefox 55 was no more than a week late, which I can totally live with.
- da02 9y agoYou're correct. In the past the Firefox updates were very late sometimes (based an anecdotes I've read), but the situation has improved and should keep improving as more people adopt Void. (I manually install Google Chrome and Opera. It's difficult for package managers to maintain them because of licensing and other issues.)
- bugmen0t 9y agoIf you download a Mozilla build of Firefox into somewhere user-writable, like ~/opt/, it will update itself.
- JohnZi 9y agoChromium is mostly outdated since none of the Void maintainers really uses it and want to maintain it.
- JdeBP 9y agoOf course, systemd is not the only option on Arch nowadays. * https://framagit.org/taca/archnosh https://framagit.org/taca/archnosh
- da02 9y ago
- v4n4d1s 9y agoI met Richard Stallman in 2013. He used a Lemote Yeelong which was powered by a MIPS Loongson CPU.
- 0footprint 9y agoYes, what's funny about that is that is a Chinese designed processor which at first refused to pay royalties to MIPS. FYI for whoever: MIPS (the company) had major financial issues and was purchased by Imagination tech in 2013. But their patents ended up with a group of companies, including some which went to ARM. MIPS as at one point the fastest CPUs (from a millions instructions per seconds stand point) you could buy, and were in high-end SGI boxes.
- bitwize 9y agoI saw him recently. He is using a ThinkPad these days, probably one of those refurbed and reflashed ones with a free BIOS.
- icebraining 9y agoYeap. Thinkpad X60, running libreboot and Trisquel: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
- digi_owl 9y agoIn large part because someone stole his bag, computer and all.
- 0footprint 9y agoApparently you aren't familiar with high end routers and network accelerator hardware.
- askvictor 9y agoI have a 'smart' TV running Android that has a mips processor.
- opk 9y agoThe motivation comes down to little more than a couple of the main Void developers owning a witiboard. Perhaps there's other hardware floating around but there was quite a bit of discussion on IRC surrounding the witi.
- nialv7 9y agoForgot to mention: void also provides musl linked binaries for all packages. So kinda like Alpine, but you can choose between glibc and musl.
- pmarin 9y agocrappy routers.
- daptaq 9y agoSane defaults.