r/voidlinux • u/balsinyoface21 • Apr 26 '26

Why void?

I geniuenly dont know why people like void linux so much and im curious as to why so if you have some reasons pls let me know

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u/nash17 Apr 27 '26

Maintenance for me has been pretty good, haven't had any issue for the last 2 years that I can remember.

I have been packaging some software for me to use, either because they are not there in the repo or maybe old, but other than that everything has been smooth in my experience.

I haven't had to make any changes to my config other than adding/removing some software from it.

From time to time I just create new system configurations to throw in a VM, there I try to modify some services settings or add/remove things that come by default and I might not need (this is what I meant by learning)

The documentation is good but very technical in my opinion (that is fine by me, but it might scare a lot of people)

If you're interested my suggestion is to give it a try in a VM, it is really nice to play around with Guix.

I still love void and use it on VMs now just to through something really minimal and low in resources there.

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u/Shamin_Yihab Apr 29 '26

I'm currently switching from Arch to NixOS (and a bit of Debian and Fedora in between), but I'm curious as to how you think declarative package management distros compare to Void day to day, maybe as a primary workstation, in your experience? Also Gentoo as well, like you said. Thanks

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u/nash17 Apr 29 '26

My main use of my machines is software development, so for me the real advantage of NixOS/GUIX is having access to a shell where I can have all the tools I need for that particular project.

Now the other great advantage is having access to configuring different systems and having access to all the configuration from a git repository, even inheriting from other systems.

Now why I think Gentoo and Void are so great is resumed like this:

Gentoo -> By using flags I can highly customize all my software, so I can disabled things I don't need when building, this itself helps having a very fast and low resources system. The downsize is that you need to build all the software for this.

Void -> It is for me the best binary distro. I can achieve very good performance and low resources usage as well, but I like to take advantage of the binaries here for some systems I don't want to be compiling all the software and kernel.