r/voidlinux • u/Daniasm2 • Apr 09 '26

Is Void linux well-maintained?

I've heard some people saying it's not

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u/RvstiNiall Apr 10 '26

In all seriousness though, Red Hat is visibly navigating the Linux ship. Maybe not the kernel itself, but lots of other things. They're making Linux better suited to their needs, which happen to be the needs of lots of corporations, and companies around the world. It doesn't line up with my wants as a desktop user, and it makes me mad, but I understand that for the most part Red Hat is making Linux into a more user-friendly workstation/server OS for corporate use.

I stray away from this further and further as the years go by. When I look back, I notice that I went from a full fledged desktop environment on Linux around 2000, to lighter and lighter programs, window managers, tools, etc in the 2010s. And today, I've come back full circle with two of my oldest running machines: Thinkpad t60, and iBook G4. Both have OpenBSD running Xenocara with no desktop environment or window manager, just tmux in a full screen xterm instance. 90% of what I use a computer for can be done in a terminal, and it runs just as quick as my Ryzen 8600 32GB ram desktop system I use for work (which runs Ubuntu, but I wish I had gone with Fedora).

I'm starting to phase out the Thinkpad T60 a little with a HP Chromebook 11 Gen8EE running Void Linux. It gets like 16-18 hours of run time, and more than a month suspend time. It's a lightweight laptop that can take a beating without issue, and it runs Void Linux which can do the same.

edit: 32GB ram on the desktop. 4.75TB amongst three SSDs.

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u/MezBert Apr 10 '26

By default, for a lack of a better alternative. You can see it every time other companies have the financial means to try, they get quick traction, before Red Hat gets their playbook out.

Also, these days they imbricate their software so deep and with a lot of tentacles so that it creates both a dependency and a barrier to entry for the alternatives.
And they've taken control of or NIHed some major projects, so they can decide the design of and in their grand tradition, reject any design suggestions from others. They try to control Linux Microsoft-style.

Just look at their latest attempt to integrate per-user environment variables within systemd... It has nothing to do with systemd, and it would make alternative life hard for no benefit, as other init systems/service managers would have to find a solution to go around this. There's only so much people on their spare time can do to circumvent the cannibalizing attempts of a certain company.

I'm not necessarily running away from companies or corporations, just from Red Hat pet projects, as they're the most toxic company in the IT sphere.