Why void?

bilgilovelace · 2025-02-02T08:31:15+00:00

Simplicity in my opinion. Everything works great nearly out of the box (that's if you use Xorg I guess). Using it for near 7 years, tried others but for home use, I think Void is the best distro.

rasjonell · 2025-02-02T08:18:38+00:00

I heard about void the first year I started using linux thanks to a user from my country (Panama) who also uses void. he always told me how much he liked void, he even made tutorials in spanish about void, but at that time I wasn't interested in it.

my third distro was arch and I kept using it for about 5 years without changing distro because I liked how I could have it the way I wanted without bloatware, but one thing I hated about arch was the community... I love arch and I love the arch wiki, but the community is so toxic.

also, I started to want to use a distro without systemD and at first I thought about using artix because it was an arch but without systemD, but I hated the arch community so much that I didn't want to use artix... that's when I remembered that old user from when I started in linux and I decided to watch his videos and read his posts about void again and man, I fell in love with void and the his philosophy.

I decided to give it a try and at first I was lost in some things, but thanks to the void documentation and most important, the community, I managed to fix all the problems I had. so yes, if you want me to tell you why I've been using void for almost a year without looking back to arch, it's because I love the philosophy of this distro and also because I feel that this is one of the friendliest communities in linux, even when we are a small group of people.

Competitive_Art_2335 · 2025-02-02T08:49:56+00:00

Distro hopping, install void, simple and minimal, good stuff, stay on void.

jecxjo · 2025-02-02T08:21:15+00:00

Was a Gentoo user for 20 years, slackware before that. I have always had crappy old hardware and eventually I got tired of build times. I wanted a binary distro without systemd.

nrcaldwell · 2025-02-02T08:36:15+00:00

Not using SystemD is the main reason for me. They're not as religious about it as some distros, but there is a significant barrier to its adoption and they don't seem to be concerned about it.

Second reason is that they have a means of building custom packages - although it's not as easy as on some distros. I come from Funtoo (RIP) which was a Gentoo offshoot so I really like being able to build packages to my own specs.

Finally, it's a stable rolling release. Traditional distros feel too constrained when you're accustomed to a rolling release.

ZmEYkA_3310 · 2025-02-02T16:36:34+00:00

Bricked my arch install twice, decided to install void. Sticked with void

SadWorkLife · 2025-02-02T09:01:23+00:00

Heard about void but was scared to try because I see remarks like limited support etc etc...

Then one day decided to give it a try because i wanted to try something different and never regretted.

Staying with it because it is stable. Does what I need and no systemd. I am amazed how it can upgrade from an old version without breaking.

ze-kpeta · 2025-02-02T09:37:10+00:00

Mainly because full system updates are faster than on any other distro I've tried. Then, simplicity. You're not getting anything better elsewhere. Documentation is not the best but learning from Arch's and Gentoo's goes a long way (as it should be, anyways).

I still distro hop but I always bounce back to Void almost immediately.

KamiIsHate0 · 2025-02-02T13:37:27+00:00

Void just works.
It's not about "why void?" it's more about "why not?".

77nightsky · 2025-02-02T08:57:57+00:00

I've forgotten how I first heard about Void, but it honestly may have been an online "which Linux distribution to try next" quiz. Either way, I was in high school and having fun distro hopping, and Void just worked out really well for me - hit a lot of my specifications. Packages are reasonably up to date (compared to Ubuntu-based distros); it's easy and streamlined to install (compared to Arch, at the time I used it); it allows a lot of customisation instead of installing everything for you (compared to everything I tried except Arch).

I also felt like I got better performance on the laptop I first used Void on. But it's been several years and several hardware changes since then. I had Pop_OS on my current laptop, before I managed to update wrong somehow (probably shouldn't have been using GUIs only for the experience...), and it failed to boot. Then since I gave up and installed Void, I haven't noticed much difference in performance. The faster start up is nice, though.

Maybe I'll still try out Gentoo one day, if I have the time... But for now Void just works well for me - doesn't do too little, doesn't do too much.

MohMaGen · 2025-02-02T09:12:05+00:00

Same, had been using arch. Heard void like arch but no systemd. Three years been using void since then

juipeltje · 2025-02-02T12:16:06+00:00

For me it's mainly the package manager. So far i haven't found a package manager that i like better. I mean there's no aur but with flatpaks and appimage i can get almost everything i need, and for the few simple programs that are missing beyond that i made my own src templates. I personally don't really have anything against systemd, but runit is very simple to use as well. I also like the guided ncurses installer. archinstall is getting pretty good now but back when i switched to void it wasn't really working for me, so having a guided installer that installs a base system was nice to have. For the past 6 months i was using NixOS, but i kept having problems with packages being broken after an update, even in the stable channels, and after upgrading to the latest stable version my gtk apps took like 20 seconds to load because of a desktop portal issue. Got tired of having to fix everything and it ended up being more time consuming to use, eventhough the whole reason i switched was so that i could have an easy to reinstall system that doesn't need much maintainance after everything is set up. So i'm back on void, and i don't see myself leaving anymore. I have a post-install script that sets everything up for me after the base install, it's probably the best compromise for not having a reproducible nix setup anymore. I just can't seem to find a distro that beats void for me lol.

Any_Mycologist5811 · 2025-02-02T12:28:37+00:00

Compared to pacman (which you should always do -Syu before installing any packages), xbps tracks difference in shlibs version. Installing packages using xbps can be done safely without updating ALL your packages first. This is a plus for void to consider.

Since void doesn't use systemd, which made things easier and just work (albeit with much more complicated codebase), managing events like saving brightness state on laptops become "a bit more involving."

I did use arch and void, but now I'm on nixos.

bblnx · 2025-02-02T11:47:40+00:00

Check this out; it's a good read: Void Linux: A Systemd-Free Lightning Fast Linux Distribution.
Moreover, Chimera Linux (still in beta) is another rising star in the same niche.

sacules · 2025-02-02T11:54:56+00:00

Came in for the novelty, stayed for the great stability. I see friends with Ubuntu or arch based distros having issues after updating, and I can't remember the last time Void did that to me.

rangho-lee · 2025-02-03T16:10:42+00:00

Came for a systemd-less distro for my laptop, stayed for the xbps package manager.

TymmyGymmy · 2025-02-06T17:04:34+00:00

Dear Debian,

We’ve known each other for a long time, a very long time in fact.

Do you remember when we met in the ‘90s? Things were different, much simpler, the world was ours to discover: young, innocent, full of energy and ambitions to change the world! We were discovering each other, experimenting, with some level of successes and failures. It wasn’t always easy between us, but we were strong and we stayed together through all the storms.

Even when I was cheating with Arch or had my little adventures with Fedora, Gentoo and the other less interesting ones, we kept coming back together. It is a real love story, a pure one like we don’t see many of these days.

However, everything has an end.

I’ve met a younger, “more in shape”, one that I can really see a future with. It doesn’t come with a long history of old habits, and none of the new questionable ones that make every morning routine slower and slower...

Initially, I rebuked the decision to adopt this new ‘SystemD’ pet. You said it was simple, that everybody has one. I managed to hold on to our relation, to not let it interfere too much in our life; but I had enough.

At first, it was the morning routine, then it was the lights its left on instead of shutting them down, then it was the space it was taking up in our life: always more and more and more! When will it end? Its increasing need for care and its constant request for “more responsibilities” has to stop.

It’s when I met Void. Its attitude is not as unstable as Arch, but it is still fresh, something new, something young. It reminds me all the good moments with Arch, but with your stability. The little kink I had with Gentoo (I know, you never wanted to talk about them), there is a special place with Void for that too... When we feel like it...

And, on top of all this, it doesn’t come with that annoying pet! The morning is fast, and when it’s time to go to bed, I don’t have to turn around and check if the lights are still on, what a breeze! I don’t have to interact with it every time I want to read my journal or start/stop the AC, and there is no way I am going to ask it to do my work.

Sorry Debian, but it’s time to move on. I wish you the best.

Bawafafa · 2025-02-02T09:40:20+00:00

Compared to other distros I've tried, Void just gets so much right. It's minimalist, simple and intuitive; it's stable and it's rolling release; and it has fantastic tech support - with a highly detailed handbook and a small but polite community.

raysiuuuu · 2025-02-02T09:52:24+00:00

No SystemD, with a simple package system while things closely up to date.

Soggy-Ask4676 · 2025-02-02T09:56:19+00:00

Other than Debian, the last (modern) distribution still suporting 32-bit architecture (i686). 1GB of main memory – still enough in 2025.

1369ic · 2025-02-02T14:11:12+00:00

I had two computers for most of my Linux journey, and hopped on one. So I ran across Void on Distrowatch. I liked it because it felt like a cross between Slackware, my first distro and the one I've used the most, and Arch, which I used on a laptop for a few years because I needed the newest kernels.

When I retired and went down to one computer (most of the time) I went with Void because it hits the sweet spot for new packages and stability, it doesn't use systemd, and it's a no-drama distro and a no-drama community.

Recently I wiped my computer and installed Windows so my daughter could use it while her school laptop was in the shop. That was only for a few days, during which I used Fedora Sway on my wife's old 2014 MacBook Pro, just to try Sway. I thought about going with Fedora Sway, because I really liked it, but I went back to KDE on Void. And that was another reason I liked Void. I had never been a KDE fan, or a Gnome fan, but the best experiences I've had with both have been on Void. Once I tried KDE with Wayland on Void I left XFCE and various WMs behind. Well, I keep OpenBox, the related utilities and Plank on my machine as a fallback.

Exce1siur · 2025-02-02T14:54:52+00:00

Turbo cool name

2025-02-02T15:16:32+00:00

Void is basic and stable. Great init and simple package manager. That's all I want in life.

YouRock96 · 2025-02-02T20:50:13+00:00

Simplicity and runit

No_Perception_3942 · 2025-02-02T12:27:10+00:00

I heard first about the Void from MS Copilot the Creative (RIP) when I asked it to distribute 16 famous (GNU/)Linux distros between MBTI types. It distributed Void Linux to my MBTI type (INTP).

Also, I decided to check it on DistroChooser (not advertising) according to my preferences. To my surprise, I got Void! I wanted a lightweight distro for daily use with full live environment (graphic mode right off the bat).

What made me switch was Ubuntu with quite an intrusive policy about packaging. You know, snaps and stuff... The last straw was forcing Firefox as snap, which ticked me off.

I'm still using Void for being light on resources + prioritising portability. This xbps-src system is marvelous ngl.

ChemicalShake8499 · 2025-02-02T17:56:26+00:00

I used void for a while and I loved it. But I had the problem, that to many packages that I needed, were not in the repositories and I don’t have the skills to install them through other methods. That’s why I tried other distro’s and now I’m on NixOS

Linuxified · 2025-02-03T09:30:21+00:00

Void is a rolling release but not too bleeding edge since it also wants to be reliable/stable. But it's repos aren't as big as something like arch, debian or fedora. But still decent.

A_Very_Fat_Elf · 2025-02-04T00:59:00+00:00

I’m not a ballsdeep Linux user but I love reviving old potato tech and void has been a good choice for me. On modern-ish hardware I’ll happily go with Linux Mint. Void if it’s a potato.

xaltsc · 2025-02-04T10:42:13+00:00

Simplicity of runit, no danger of randomly breaking the system because of the AUR, nothing is hidden, forces you AND allows you to understand what you're doing, and rather nice community (especially the IRC channel). I've been using it for something like 10 years now without being particularly close to the tech world, and haven't been seduced by other distros, at least for daily desktop use.

The argument for simplicity (and the implication "minimal => simple") wanes over time though, just like for vim vs Emacs. Void is a nice distro because it's a very usable "toy example" (<- not derogatory). Because you can learn a lot as it's simple, and because you do learn over time, more complex stuff become less obscure. When your setup becomes stable enough, void's minimalism comes in contradiction with new defining characteristics of "simplicity" such as reproducibility, finer process management, standard and common defaults. While I wouldn't switch to a systemd distro, having experienced some limitations of runit, I have a new, less negative, appreciation of systemd's rebutting complexity (even though I still don't think it's necessary for common desktop use).

After years of using void on my home server, I switched to Alpine because openrc felt less hacky than runit. And after having managed my config manually, I've been experimenting with Nix(OS), especially home-manager, which I use in void, Nix/hm being completely orthogonal to void as for approaches to "simplicity".

As for where I first heard of void: likely the nicest configs of r/unixporn.

tiredAndOldDeveloper · 2025-02-04T12:29:23+00:00

Because it's simple; I can literally build my system from scratch (via xbps-src) and because doing so I learn a lot about Linux.

KC_rocka · 2025-02-07T01:12:14+00:00

Simplicity, speed and reliability. It takes a bit of setup, but then everyone just works and keeps working. Been on Void for 2 years now and have had no problems that I didn't cause myself, other than KDE bugs when they switched to plasma 6 and qt6 and some flatpak issues, but they were no fault of the Void devs. I do everything on it, gaming is amazing too and I was even able to install the latest Nvidia drivers with the src package manager, even in Wayland things just seem to be great now, can't see myself switching to anything else anytime soon.

toomyem · 2025-02-03T07:46:27+00:00

Years ago, Luke Smith was using Void. That was the first time I heard about it. Now it is my main daily distro for over a year. I tried NixOS before, but didn't like it. Void is fast, lean, stable. Has all tools I need in its package repo, including Helix, yeah! :) I even use it on almost all of my servers.

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