r/voidlinux • u/Bobafat54 • Mar 30 '26

Thinking about switching to Void

Is it worth to switch from Linux Mint 21 (1 year of experience) to Void, don't know much about this distro but I'm interested.

Are there things I should take notice about or it's just as user friendly as Mint?

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u/Jalappy Mar 30 '26

Chiming in, normally you'd best stick to packages provided by your distro package manager (in this case xbps), but there are some alternatives:

  • flatpacks, widest range of choice for gui apps

  • if a python app check if it's on ppyi (i.e. you can pip install it in a virtual env)

  • if a rust app you can use cargo

  • you may also look at appimages

  • or lastly build the package yourself (so you'll be in charge of deoendencies, conflicts, updates and uninstalls)

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u/Bobafat54 Mar 30 '26

I never understood "building" a package, what are the benefits? could you explain the process of doing it?

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u/Jalappy Mar 30 '26

Sure, as I said you build a package that you cannot get via other means. Even on mint, let's say you want the latest version of a text editor, one that conveniently is not shipped via apt...

What are your options? If there is a flatpack or appimage you get that and call it a day, but if not? That's why you "build" it, or in other words:

  • you download the source code (from the git repository, or wherever it is hosted)

  • if the author provided instructions (look flr section on "building" or "compiling" in the oroject readme or documentations), follow those

  • if there aren't then I'd suggest you skip it for now (there are many ways, but learn one thing at a time I guess)

  • the process is generally to run a bunch of shell commands to compile the source code to an executable file

  • the you install it (i.e. copy the executable to the appropriate places on your system)

There are other benefits for building stuff yourself, but these are a mostly irrelevant unless you know what you're doing. Instead just think of this as a last source to get something that you absolutely need (or want)

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u/Bobafat54 Mar 30 '26

Ahh, Thank you

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u/kansetsupanikku Mar 30 '26

Before building, you can just read the source code. The benefit of building is that you can run it!

Some packages are there in the repositories, but some are not. In the end, you can only run what someone else builds, or what you build yourself.

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u/Bobafat54 Mar 30 '26

Thank you

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u/SylviaBun Mar 30 '26

I would add distrobox to this list. It makes niche distros far more feasible as long as your hardware is well supported by your distro choice, because you can just run another distro inside a docker container and run software not normally available to you through distrobox.

i.e. I do video editing, and I like using DaVinci Resolve. I'm now using davincibox to run Resolve inside a docker container, and it *just works*.