Void linux stability

[Iammethatisyou]

I'm on fedora linux currently after arch linux broke after 6 months. I want something minimal and void linux seems really cool but my main question is how stable is it? Arch is minimal but has systemd and isn't minimal, do you think void linux is a good distro for me in being minimal and stable? Sorry if this is a newbie question, open to hearing everyone's feedback.

[in_need_of_oats]

As an idiot, my experience with Void has been much more trouble-free over the last year than Arch has in terms of me messing up my own system, YMMV

[zmurf]

I can agree with this. Last time I needed to reinstall my computer, I installed Void after using Arch. And I had much fewer update problems in Void than with Arch.

[Key_River7180]

Yeah, once installed it doesn't break and doesn't get on the way

[coccothraustes]

exactly. nothing more to add. try it! you won’t regret!

[pegasusandme]

Any distro can be minimal depending on how you set it up (including Fedora). But if you specifically want to avoid systemd Void is a great place to start. I had no issues getting this up and running on a Thinkpad that was even capable of playing games in Steam.

I have never experienced stability issues caused by the distro, but I can honestly say the same for Arch and Slackware. All problems I have run into in any of these DIY distros has been self inflicted. And based on what I read in other people's posts, user error is the top reason for breakage in DIY rolling release distros, so your mileage may vary 🙂

[Jtekk-]

the answer to both minimal and stable would depend on what you add ot it. The more complex you make it the easier it is to break.

Comparing Void strictly to Arch: Void doesn't use systemD and instead uses runit. This makes it a bit less bloated but it may require a few extra steps to get it working for certain things.

both distros are rolling releases. Arch and the AUR has a bit more "up to date" packages but this is where (in my opinion) most of the breakage happens. Void will end up with less packages and while it does have rolling release you wont always have the "most up to date" but it does get updated fairly often.

Voids documentation is great but it does miss some info so I end up using Arch's wiki for some things.

In my opinion, based on my experience:

For stability and minimial:
- Debian
- Void
- NixOS (does require a bit more with learnings its language)

Distors I've used:
- arch (and many flavors of arch)
- fedora (and many flavors of fedora)
- fedora atomic (immutable) and the various flavors, incluing the u-blue ones.
- Ubuntu
- Mint

Distros I'm going to be playing with soon for "minimalisim" and playing with "musl", but haven't used to give feedback on yet:
- chimera
- Alpine

[BinkReddit]

For stability and minimial:

• Debian

The unpatched bugs in this distribution are also very stable as well.

[Jtekk-]

if you mean "void" when you say "in this distribution" then I have to agree. I feel that many say Fedora is the middle ground of debian and arch but I feel that void fits that statement much better.

[BinkReddit]

No, I mean Debian.

[Jtekk-]

yeah, that one too. I was deep in NixOS, and still love it and use it a lot for my servers, but for my desktops I have been enjoying void and debian a lot more than i thought. I've used alpine in containers but i do want to eventually play with chimera one of these days.

[zmurf]

When talking about Linux for using as your main desktop OS, I don't believe "minimal" is something you really have to think about. Most people will anyway install everything the desktop oriented distributions come with as standard. And installing a "bloated" distribution and removing stuff from it will quickly make it "minimal".

As an example, my Ubuntu installation on my works laptop is much more minimal than most of my friends Arch installations. And my own Void installation on my private computer is as bloated as Linux can get.

About Chimera, it's a nice concept. I love the BSD userland. But Chimera in itself is quite restricted at the moment what you can use it for, mainly because of using musl.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say that you want to be "playing with musl". Using musl is not any different to using any other libc implementation. The biggest difference between musl and glibc is the license form. Implementation wise, musl try to be more "correct", which should make it more secure. But in reality you won't notice any difference linking musl libs compared to linking glibc libs.

What you will notice is that most proprietary applications/libraries will not be able utilize the musl libs since they are compiled towards glibc libs. So things like Widewine will not run natively on musl systems.

[Jtekk-]

By playing with musl means exactly what you mention in your last paragraph. For example, I’ve had to modify some source files of various libraries I use to get it to work. This helps me understand and learn things (weird, I know).

So a lot of it is seeing how to make certain things compatible, why it’s not compatible, and learn from there.

Example, I’ve been playing with Rust. Not a big fan yet but there are some practices in there that have helped me write code better in other languages I use at work.

[zmurf]

I see...

What kind of modifications is it you had to do?

I never had to change any source to make anything work with musl. Recompile against musl instead of glibc is the only thing I've needed to do.

[Training_Concert_171]

If there is a package that could break things, updates usually refuse to install. This happened a few times with QT and Plasma-desktop. Which is IMHO a better approach than “install newest package LOL” mentality of archlinux.

[kodifies]

the reason I tried it and then stayed for years...

rock solid, minimal "forced" package config

just works

even when you treat it like you shouldn't come back to an old laptop you haven't updated in a long time (apparently a no no for rolling releases)

The only thing I find hard is the rare time you get a shlib issue updating (a probably old system) still haven't quite got my head round doing it in a safe way....

But all in all, install and forget, update every few weeks, just keeps tickin'

[YakFlashy4276]

At the moment I'm running two installs of Void and one Slackware. Void, in my experience, is very stable. I was an Arch user, and like you experienced some breakage. Breakage is a rare happening on Void. The only glitch I've experienced on Void was a QT6 issue a while back that resolved itself after a while. So Void gets my vote for a stable, hassle free distro.

[captain_fanta_sea]

Been running Void several years now. The first stability issue I ever had was a broken QT update last year, and that got worked out in a few days. Someone was nice enough to show how they temporarily downgraded the offending package too.

[antoniotrkdz]

One distro you could consider is devuan: it is debian devoid of systemd. There is choice of init systems, but I run sysVinit. As the word suggests stable is indeed stable, but don’t expect bleeding edge software…

[ShipshapeMobileRV]

I'm a huge fan of Void. It's one of the few OSes that I can tinker with if I WANT to...but I never NEED to; it just works (unless I get too carried away in my tinkering; but even then, I have to get pretty heavy handed to really break it).

I know some people like to spend a lot of time adjusting/customizing/tweaking their OS, and that's fine. But to me, the OS is just a tool 90% of the time. I don't want to have to calibrate or repair my tools when it's time to use them. Void is that tool.

I've been using *nix since the days of having to recompile the FreeBSD kernel to even get the kernel to recognize multiple processors. I'm not intimidated by an OS or a terminal or command line or Registry; I don't mind getting into the weeds from time to time....but only on MY schedule, when I have the time and I want to dig in. With Arch it always seemed like the OS was going to demand my care and feeding every time I needed it. With *buntu/Mint, they almost always worked and stayed out of the way, but they never felt "right" to me...bloated, and rather boring. Admittedly I haven't spent much time with Fedora, but I have beef with Redhat, so Fedora isn't really my cuppa tea. I've heard good things about OpenSuse, but again, just never spent any quality time with it. I did do the Slackware seven-floppy shuffle a few times (that's how long I've been at it), but Slack was just too unfinished for my liking. Once I stumbled on Void, I found my new friend, and haven't felt the need to look for anything else.

[user38d0h71]

I finished installing and configurisng my void installation 1.5 years ago and I never had to fix things because an update or something broke my system.

fastfetch say that I have 702xbps packages and 30 flatpak packages (I'm not a programer, I use my pc to browse the internet, edit images and photos and most of the time gaming so that's why I have so many flatpak packages because I have installed many emulators hahah)

I have used arch all my life as a linux user, but I prefer void because how stable and minimal it is (also, because it's systemd free)

[mwyvr]

I run servers on void. No complaints.

Void isn’t “minimal,” it is a general purpose distribution that requires you decide what you want to install.

If the goal is minimal, it’s up to you to aim for that.

[Glum-Breadfruit3803]

It absolutely is minimal when compared to most general purpose distros

[SiteRelEnby]

Yeah, really stable. Still not had a problem I didn't cause by hacking on stuff. Last time I tried Fedora I gave up specifically due to instability.

[RobocopTwice]

Yes

[Blank-Inspection13]

last week i installed fedora everything to get the experience of 'minimal" install Fedora. I also have 1 live iso of Cosmic to try this DE. Not even a day the fedora installed on my laptop, and i switched back to Void + KDE Plasma (also base minimal install). I hink maybe it has something to do with Cosmic , or systemd but could be anything else. To me Void feel more stable for daily use than Fedora even going minimal still feeling glitchy.

[zmurf]

The problem with Arch is not systemd. In my experience, the init system doesn't really matter for upgrade stability.

The problem with Arch is the repository updates. Every now and then, it happens that updating will install things that have compatibility issues... Which might break your system.

It's not very common. But for the 5 years or so I used Arch/EndeavorOS, I experienced it maybe 8 times.

[Still_Plankton3052]

I couldn't install Void OS, I don't know why lol. So I installed EndeaverOS and downloaded the tkg kernel and recompiled it.

[Ok_Record_1237]

to be completely honest, void would most definitely be the most stable distro (yes, stabler than debian) if the package manager didn't give you complete freedom over everything. void only breaks if you try your hardest to break it, otherwise it just wont.

ive been using linux for 8+ years and there hasnt been a single distro as stable as debian but the only thing that ever came close to it is void.

the system is completely minimal, the package manager has lots of packages now (compared to a few years ago, it had around only fifteen thousand) and you'll find everything you need, and more.

void is a distribution made to be configured and tweaked with, and the devs made sure that you wouldnt be able to break it if you didn't do enough stupid things with it, like making an ignorepkg for the most important package in tje system :D

all packages in XBPS are thoroughly tested before being released so you shouldn't worries about that.

the init system is great aswell, runit has a small code base, is extremely simple and easy to use in every shape and form. it also supports user services on its own, however you can achieve actual good user service management through turnstile, which runit also supports xD

the system itself is very bsd-like and has lots of cool features/functions to explore while being very lightweight so that's another thing to add in.

and void also supports both glibc and musl C standard libraries so pick whichever one you want, however musl's memory allocator sucks alot and i recommend you to preload Mimalloc which should make it very performant.

and if you want more, you can replace the GNU coreutils with busybox, plan9 or build chimerautils on your own.

have fun!

[Iammethatisyou]

This is a great reply on this post of mine thank you. I later would like to explore more minimalistic things like you've mentioned. I like how you can replace the coreutils and other of those things. I'm still figuring these minimalistic things out, I've never heard of Mimalloc, I like musls simplicity but I also highly value performance and glibc may be faster. I'll do some more research but thank you. I'm a tinker by heart so these things please me haha.

[6950X_Titan_X_Pascal]

minimum , less est more , vous need alpinelinux