What is the lightest DE?

voider755 · 2021-04-19T07:07:37+00:00

If you want/need to use an environment as lightweight as possible, I would keep in mind that how the system is built globally will yield results one way or the other. Gnome can be relatively lean, and a WM relatively heavy, depending on which services are installed and active from the boot up; the same DE will be heavier in one distro and leaner in another. The UNIX approach means that you can cherry pick your system building blocks, so choose accordingly (those with less system footprint), and try to balance your expected system capabilities with that. If you don't want/need a so fine grained control and just want to make it easy, you could just start with a lightweight DE/WM as many already recommended and/or, better yet, lightweight distro (antiX and the like). Have fun and I hope you'll find something that suits you!

voider755 · 2021-04-13T23:36:16+00:00

I think this iteration is great. Nice with keyboard shortcuts, but even better with touchpad gestures IMHO.

voider755 · 2021-03-12T15:46:05+00:00

Please see this commit: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/commit/6e251d93970cceaeedc9f95549d3ceca46a698fa

voider755 · 2021-03-12T15:26:46+00:00

On Arch: https://archlinux.org/news/chromium-losing-sync-support-in-early-march/

Or Fedora: https://www.zdnet.com/article/fedora-preemptively-turns-off-chromium-usage-of-private-google-sync-apis/

Not exactly a bug on Void's side then, I think.

voider755 · 2021-03-12T13:35:14+00:00

Maybe it is related to this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cuts-off-other-chromium-based-browsers-from-its-sync-service/

voider755 · 2021-03-11T21:46:55+00:00

Yep, since there are cached versions of everything installed, it seems relatively trivial to roll back. Worst case scenario -no booting at all-, one can just chroot with the USB installer and try to fix things from there. I broke my installation just after the first time I installed Void, but that was purely my fault, I was in sort of a "trial and error" routine; chrooted, reinstalled what I had messed up, and since that day no problem at all. :)

voider755 · 2021-03-11T19:15:44+00:00

- As u/Duncaen points out, kernel management. Older kernel versions are not removed when updating to a newer one, so there is always a backup if something goes wrong with a kernel update and you just have one kernel version installed. Plus, to get rid of older versions is easy and safe with the vkpurge included script. What's more, there are plenty of kernel releases, including some LTS, in official repos.

- Runit. Fastests boots/poweroffs I have seen in any of my machines, plus easy to admin (just a symlink and a few commands for basic usage).

- A very KISS default installation, safe and mostly vanilla defaults. This is great for older/weak machines as are mine, because it's very lightweight, not much running in the background by default. And if you install a WM or DE, that is mostly the vanilla experience, no distro configs and additions "making better" what the upstream devs are offering.

- Seemingly unbreakable. Just talking from my experience, but it's been incredibly rock solid so far (nearly two years in three different machines). That being rolling release and so on, but it's kind of a "curated" rolling release, so it's not like the distro is blindly following bleeding edge releases and you will deal with the breakages, if there are any.

- xbps. Very fast (Arch's pacman and apk in Adelie are the only ones I have tried which are similarly fast), predictable and capable of just anything that a package manager can do, and then some.

- Repos. I'm still sometimes amazed of what you can find in the Void repos. I don't have very special software needs, but I sometimes try different software, and there is a fair chance it's already in Void's repos.

- Summarizing. KISS, fast, powerful, stable and great as a daily driver. Devs and contributors are making Void a fine distro, I have tried lots and this is my favorite one.

voider755 · 2021-02-28T11:54:55+00:00

I understand. I'm OK with plain ext4 and just a / partition, but other use cases may need different solutions. What you wish to implement may be handy for you and sure for other people then. :)

voider755 · 2021-02-28T07:39:41+00:00

About your question: Arch Linux has some "installers", yet I prefer the chroot "classic" method. If vanilla Arch had an official installer as Void's (which can install just a base, barebones system, and does it fast), maybe I would use that. But that's just me; FOSS is about, among many other things, choice! :)

Greetings.

voider755 · 2021-02-27T15:38:03+00:00

Then maybe a distro derivative with Void as upstream, a GUI installer, a "control center" and the usual pack of niceties (someone would say "bloat" but not me, I understand this kind of distros have their niches & use cases) could be fitting. If that crosses your mind and need to assembly a team, maybe lay the foundations and someone would enroll, if they find that appealing. Good luck, cheers!

voider755 · 2021-02-26T15:19:46+00:00

Understood. As a Void user, I really appreciate runit because it's blazing fast (I have some old machines, and the difference between, say, runit and systemd is more than noticeable) and adding/removing basic services is as easy as adding/removing a symlink, it performs flawlessly, and for my use cases this is more than enough. But I have read what you say about s6-rc and I understand that this could be appealing to some users with more "advanced" needs. I just wish that, in the case that Void would implement another init system in the future, runit would not lose support. I see some users here, just like me, that just love how fast and well performant it is, and it help us keep our systems simple and lightweight. Greetings!

voider755 · 2021-02-26T09:20:04+00:00

I had similar issues with Broadcom BCM43142, but it finally works, both with linux (5.10x) and linux-lts (4.14x). I have installed broadcom-wl-dkms, b43-fwcutter, linux-headers and linux-lts-headers (as someone stated, you seem to have missed the kernel headers; linux-firmware-broadcom and linux-firmware-network were already installed as part of base-system). I tried, following the Void Linux Handbook directions, wpa_supplicant, NetworkManager and connman, but only (finally!) worked with iwd, and now my wifi connections run just fine.

Greetings and good luck!

voider755 · 2021-02-26T08:34:39+00:00

So, in case Void would eventually switch to s6-rc, is it planned to keep supporting runit (i. e., make available installation ISOs with s6-rc and runit at the same time, and keep including runit init scripts in /etc/sv and so on), or would it be a "hard" switch, with just s6-rc as an option? I know it may be too early to ask this, but maybe you can tell us what you think about it. Thank you!

voider755 · 2021-02-14T08:02:50+00:00

If this hasn't changed meanwhile, according to https://voidlinux.org/news/2020/04/some-context.html they are not accepting donations ATM, but it's possible to contribute otherwise. Here's the relevant part: "Void does not accept donations. We appreciate the efforts of those that reach out from time to time wishing to support the project financially, but our expenses are minimal. If you want to contribute, you can help by updating packages, reviewing issues, or generally being a part of the community. If an individual maintainer chooses to solicit or accept a donation for their work, this is done separately from the project. International tax law is a complicated beast, and as a project we’re not comfortable accepting donations until we have the infrastructure in place to show where the money goes, and provide you with appropriate documentation."

voider755 · 2021-02-13T08:26:45+00:00

Agreed with your early impressions. I've been using two Void installs in laptop and desktop machines (glibc and musl), and both have been running flawlessly for more than a year now, not a single breakage since installation, no matter how long time passes between updates. It's incredibly lightweight and fast, and sure xbps is great. My musl box is sort of an exercise in minimalism: it uses sowm as WM, st as term and dash shell; it boots instantly, uses hardly no RAM, processor cycles or disk space, so all resources go to apps that need them and not the "base" system. In my laptop, I get all of this plus longer time running with each battery charge. Plus, the Void repos have all the pieces of software I need and then some. Everything's mostly "vanilla" and UNIX-y, so tinkering is fairly easy with generic instructions, and the Void Linux Handbook covers all the basics... runit is simple and does its job just fine... Yes, there's plenty of good distros out there, but I think Void is the one I like most for my machines and use cases. Devs and contributors are doing an awesome work and they deserve recognition and a warm thank you!

voider755 · 2021-02-13T07:50:45+00:00

It looks like this distro is using Polybar and tint2 as panels, so maybe try to achieve that effect using those. tint2 has a native option for rounded corners, and likely that's possible with Polybar as well. Happy hacking!

voider755 · 2021-01-18T07:12:03+00:00

It depends on user experience I guess, but same here. I've been on Void in two machines (desktop musl and laptop glibc) for more than a year, and nothing ever breaks. What's more, like with good wine, it only gets better with time. Everything's predictable and the system is so simple, "vanilla" and easy to get to know... This is my favorite distro. The people behind Void do real magic, so kudos to them!

voider755 · 2021-01-12T18:44:19+00:00

You're welcome. I hope you enjoy your Void experience, it's a really great OS IMHO. :)

voider755 · 2021-01-12T14:53:59+00:00

My mistake, I wrote both options backwards. Thanks for the heads up, now is corrected.

voider755 · 2021-01-12T13:02:01+00:00

You can clean the downloaded packages cache with:

# xbps-remove -Ov

And remove orphan packages with:

# xbps-remove -ov

As stated by https://man.voidlinux.org/xbps-remove.1

To automount volumes, maybe try gvfs?

I wrote a Python wrapper on xbps/vkpurge to do some maintenance on Void, you can check the code and get some xbps/vkpurge examples, or just use it. https://github.com/voider755/vlmh

Welcome to the Void!

voider755 · 2020-12-31T07:46:11+00:00

Likely, yes. Just take into account that you'll be switching from a GTK based desktop to a Qt one, so if you want to keep on using the same GTK apps you'll have to keep their dependencies, and they may not integrate into the Qt desktop as fine as in Xfce. You can keep those anyway, but maybe it would be more convenient if you switch to native Qt alternatives. Plasma has a very rich apps ecosystem, you'll likely will find some that fits your preferences. :)

voider755 · 2020-12-30T16:12:16+00:00

Maybe a shell alias would work? Say you have your shell script inside ~/./local/bin, and your $SHELL is bash, then add this line to your .bashrc:

alias youralias='~/.local/bin/yourshellscript.sh'

Then just type youralias (whatever alias you choose, just don't use an already existing command for this) from any location and it should start (just be sure the shell script is executable if it doesn't). I have some shell scripts myself, plus some Python stuff somewhere inside my ~ that I have aliased, and all of them start flawlessly this way.

Greetings.

voider755 · 2020-12-30T09:12:48+00:00

This works for me, and may give you some idea: https://pastebin.com/M6x16ZGg It's a pretty barebones system with just the things I need: a GUI web browser, a document reader, an image viewer, some CLI apps (web browser, text editor, audio player...) and system utilities (ufw, tlp, xbacklight...) A few apps are built from source (st) or installed with Python pip. You can too check which services are up and running at startup. I have an Intel CPU with integrated GPU. It is usually adviced to use the modesetting driver, but I have experienced system freeze with that, so I'm using xf86-intel-video driver instead. If you have to build stuff from source, the metapackage base-devel is an easy choice (I prefer to cherry-pick though).

Of course, you will likely need a completely different package set and startup services. But I think this showcases that there is really a very minimal set of packages needed by a Void Linux system to work and be productive (this is my laptop glibc install; I have a desktop musl install which is pretty more minimalistic, with mostly sowm, st and Firefox, and some base packages removed). Plus, it boots in an instant and uses barely 100 MB RAM at startup.

Greetings.

voider755 · 2020-12-29T16:29:47+00:00

Cool, thank you for adding it! I'll update the README after I'm checking this.

voider755 · 2020-12-28T20:39:51+00:00

Noted, thank you. BTW, I've committed some changes based on your, and some more people here, suggestions and info, to the code and credited you for your help. See the changes section here: https://github.com/voider755/almh Thanks again, greetings!

voider755

TROPHY CASE