5 ms·

Anyone care to give the sales pitch?

tyingq 8y ago
There's one in a review here: https://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/void-linux-the-strangely-overlooked-distribution https://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/void-linux-the-strange... Key bullets from that: Independent distribution, entirely volunteer run runit system service manager by default (no systemd) xbps system package manager, simple ports-like system akin to the BSDs or the Arch Build System Fresh, constantly updated software thanks to rolling release Uses LibreSSL by default instead of OpenSSL A real hands on but KISS approach to system management, akin to Arch/ BSD etc.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  I ran Void Linux for about a year. I thought it worked pretty well. I like the runit system, which proves you can do a sane service mangement without tons and tons of complexity (cough systemd cough). A lot of other stuff took a similar simple Unix approach, which I rather like (Linux, for better or worse, often takes a more complex approach). The reason I stopped using it is because I changed jobs and had to run Vagrant, which doesn't work with the musl libc. I had to reinstall it to the glibc version, and figured I might as well use the more "mainstream" Arch Linux while I was at it, as I was a bit tired of having to spend effort in getting stuff like that to work.
  - sulam 8y ago
    I have to admit I’ve never understood why systemd is perceived as so hard to understand. Still, it’s good to see some real alternatives.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      The problem that most people have with systemd is not that it's hard to understand.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Calling systemd insane made you think he didn't understand it?
    - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
      Concrete example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/185495/33645 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/185495/33645 (I am the asker of that question). This is a really weird thing to happen, and not really easy to debug, much less fix. Look at the diff that fixed the bug for an example. No way I could have figured that out on my own without a significant investment in time. With runit, everything is pretty straightforward. Not saying I can figure out every last bug, but I can at least mostly understand what's going on if I spend a wee bit of time on it. Same with Free/NetBSD's rc system, and OpenBSD's rc system. Here, it's really hard to even figure out if this is the expected behaviour or not, as all this logic is fairly complex. I remember watching a talk Linus did about Linux around 2000. One of the reasons he likes Unix is that (paraphrased, as I didn't look up the original) "everything is understandable; you don't understand all of the system, but if you want or need to, you can go in there and understand it and hack on it". Now, that may have been true for the 2000 Linux ecosystem, but for the 2018 system ... yeah, not always. For better or worse, Linux has kind of lost this property to some degree. There are trade-offs here of course (Linux has also gained some stuff), but for me personally, I much prefer the "understandable" and "hackable" Unix systems. I think Void Linux is a good example of that (OpenBSD is another). Oh, and here's another example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/184338/33645 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/184338/33645 The systemd error message for this unexpected situation was worthless (see my self-accepted answer). It was a simple problem, but took me quite some time to figure out.
      - sulam 8y ago
        Thanks for the example, although its power is somewhat reduced by the fact that you encountered admittedly buggy behavior that has since been fixed. Still, I appreciate that this is unexpected and likely hard for even an expert user to fix.
codetrotter 8y ago
Some people like it because it uses runit instead of systemd. Some people like it because you can choose between glibc and musl. I tried the musl version but it didn’t work out for me. Things broke in strange ways. These days I use KDE Neon, a distro based on Ubuntu. My advice is, just try some of the different distros and see what works for you and what doesn’t. I have been through multiple different distros during the 10 years since I switched from Windows, but I only try new distros when there is a good reason to. My only goal is to have something that works well for me. Currently KDE Neon gives me that. In the future something else might suit me better, who knows.

There's one in a review here: https://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/void-linux-the-strangely-overlooked-distribution https://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/void-linux-the-strange... Key bullets from that: Independent distribution, entirely volunteer run runit system service manager by default (no systemd) xbps system package manager, simple ports-like system akin to the BSDs or the Arch Build System Fresh, constantly updated software thanks to rolling release Uses LibreSSL by default instead of OpenSSL A real hands on but KISS approach to system management, akin to Arch/ BSD etc.

Carpetsmoker 8y ago
I ran Void Linux for about a year. I thought it worked pretty well. I like the runit system, which proves you can do a sane service mangement without tons and tons of complexity (cough systemd cough). A lot of other stuff took a similar simple Unix approach, which I rather like (Linux, for better or worse, often takes a more complex approach). The reason I stopped using it is because I changed jobs and had to run Vagrant, which doesn't work with the musl libc. I had to reinstall it to the glibc version, and figured I might as well use the more "mainstream" Arch Linux while I was at it, as I was a bit tired of having to spend effort in getting stuff like that to work.
- sulam 8y ago
  I have to admit I’ve never understood why systemd is perceived as so hard to understand. Still, it’s good to see some real alternatives.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    The problem that most people have with systemd is not that it's hard to understand.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Calling systemd insane made you think he didn't understand it?
  - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
    Concrete example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/185495/33645 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/185495/33645 (I am the asker of that question). This is a really weird thing to happen, and not really easy to debug, much less fix. Look at the diff that fixed the bug for an example. No way I could have figured that out on my own without a significant investment in time. With runit, everything is pretty straightforward. Not saying I can figure out every last bug, but I can at least mostly understand what's going on if I spend a wee bit of time on it. Same with Free/NetBSD's rc system, and OpenBSD's rc system. Here, it's really hard to even figure out if this is the expected behaviour or not, as all this logic is fairly complex. I remember watching a talk Linus did about Linux around 2000. One of the reasons he likes Unix is that (paraphrased, as I didn't look up the original) "everything is understandable; you don't understand all of the system, but if you want or need to, you can go in there and understand it and hack on it". Now, that may have been true for the 2000 Linux ecosystem, but for the 2018 system ... yeah, not always. For better or worse, Linux has kind of lost this property to some degree. There are trade-offs here of course (Linux has also gained some stuff), but for me personally, I much prefer the "understandable" and "hackable" Unix systems. I think Void Linux is a good example of that (OpenBSD is another). Oh, and here's another example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/184338/33645 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/184338/33645 The systemd error message for this unexpected situation was worthless (see my self-accepted answer). It was a simple problem, but took me quite some time to figure out.
    - sulam 8y ago
      Thanks for the example, although its power is somewhat reduced by the fact that you encountered admittedly buggy behavior that has since been fixed. Still, I appreciate that this is unexpected and likely hard for even an expert user to fix.

codetrotter 8y ago

Some people like it because it uses runit instead of systemd. Some people like it because you can choose between glibc and musl. I tried the musl version but it didn’t work out for me. Things broke in strange ways. These days I use KDE Neon, a distro based on Ubuntu. My advice is, just try some of the different distros and see what works for you and what doesn’t. I have been through multiple different distros during the 10 years since I switched from Windows, but I only try new distros when there is a good reason to. My only goal is to have something that works well for me. Currently KDE Neon gives me that. In the future something else might suit me better, who knows.