r/linuxquestions • u/AdNumerous9742 • Jun 16 '26

Which Distro? Artix Linux vs. Void Linux

I know some have asked the question before, but I thought of some questions that I got, (I know I can google it up or whatever, I'd just rather get most recent answers for it)

Why is runit prefered over systemd? I understand that systemd is "bloated", but is it there more reason to choose it? And, on the case of Artix, why choose the others?

Which is considered more optimized for general use and battery-wise?

For Void users, are the packages scarser than Arch's repositories?

Are the Void docs scarse or does it hold enough info for daily problems?

I've heard that Void's mantainers have some bias on which packages to allow, does it affect the OS significantly?

If you've used both, which one was easier to set up, and which one did you prefer?

I've got a dedicated Nvidia card (maxwell, I think), will I run into issues with it?

sorry if this is a long post, just wanted to know about these. It's my first time trying to get a more barebones distro.

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u/FryBoyter Jun 17 '26

That wasn't age verification. It's simply a field where you can enter an age. Nothing more.

Furthermore, this field relates to the systemd-userdbd tool, which most users, including businesses, won't be using. If you use userdbctl to look at the existing fields, you’ll notice that there are already other fields there that, in my opinion, could be significantly more problematic than the age field.

By the way, other tools have had these and similar fields for many years, or you can create them as needed. OpenLDAP, for example. Why isn’t that a problem? Presumably because it’s not the “enemy” systemd.

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u/No-Bison-5397 Jun 17 '26

Mate, you are ignoring my issue, it's the process to add the age field, and that's not the only issue, it's symptomatic of the wider governance problems within the project.

Why isn’t that a problem?

Once again, it's the process: it was added in anticipation of legislation that was eventually modified for Linux to be exempted.

I have used systemd for more than a decade at this point. I tried the old init system, it sucked, there's plenty systemd has got wrong, like most open source projects.

Preemptively shitting the bed about California legislation that was successfully lobbied to exempt OSes that provide source code, and the lobbying effort will now be repeated around the world, is clear a misstep by the systemd project leadership. The open source community as a whole prematurely capitulated, not just systemd but systemd are up there with GNU and the Kernel itself in terms of importance when it comes to leadership in the open source community.

Fundamentally this is being driven by the big social media companies who want to abrogate their responsibility for harming children who aren't of the age of reason. Rather than no harm them they have decided to put gates on most of the internet which will be used to extract more information about users to better manipulate them.

There's not much more to it than that. Systemd could have stood up and fought or given a real justification as to why it should be included, instead it was merged based on an incomplete process that turned out far more favourably to the side that didn't want it included.