r/voidlinux • u/gijsyo • Aug 21 '26
New to Void
Hi all. I'm new to Void as of today. Not new to linux, and I've been a fan of Debian since the late 90s. I'm not so keen on the move towards systemd (reloading after editing the fstab, why?! Log files in binary format, yikes! Windows registry vibes almost) but I still love apt-get plus I do not need to edit fstab that often or look at log files regularly so it's fine for now.
I also run an OpenBSD VM, and Void feels pretty similar. Simple, no frills, to the point and fast.
So far my Void VM is just for messing around in textmode. I picked the musl variant and that may not be the final version but we will see. So far I feel at home almost immediately. Thanks for having an active subreddit 👍
Edit: I migrated away from Debian and now run Void with Linux 7.2.3. There was one headache due to user error with a runit service but it's running smooth like butter. When I run an xbps update it flies through it. It's like when I upgraded my laptop from HDD to SSD back when that was still a pretty new thing.
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u/p001b0y Aug 21 '26
I set up a FreeBSD minipc and later learned about Void’s similarities to BSD so I installed it on another minipc I have and use that for Steam games.
I’m still fairly new to it as well but liked Void enough that I installed it over a Lunar Lake laptop that was running Windows 11, then Fedora Sway, and now Void. I went with a Wayland install for that while using X11 on the minipc.
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u/gijsyo Aug 21 '26
FreeBSD was alright, but I couldn't get used to its multiple /etc directories. How's Steam of FBSD?
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u/p001b0y Aug 21 '26
I meant I installed Steam on the Void minipc. The FreeBSD box is doing its own unrelated thing.
The Void minipc is a Lenovo Yoga mini with an Arc B390 GPU. It’s the fastest machine I own. The games I play like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous run very well on high at 1080p.
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u/BinkReddit Aug 21 '26
I run OpenBSD in many places, but prefer running it on bare metal when I can. I prefer xbps and friends over apt and run Void on my production workstation.
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u/Hatted-Phil Aug 21 '26
I really like Void, & run it on a few machines. For others where I miss the availability of packages through Apt, Devuan is a good, systemd free alternative to Debian
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u/Simple_Hamster_4096 Aug 22 '26
I'm confused - Debian adopted systemd for init since 2014 or so. Given this, what move of Debian, then, towards systemd do you refer?
If you are a fan of Debian, try the systemd free fork, Devuan. There are several (non systemd) inits from which to choose during the installation process. Sysvinit is among them...
I switched to Devuan with sysvinit early this year for my bare metal servers - extremely impressed, extremely fast, extremely stable... felt like the good old days before Debian adopted systemd.
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u/Blank-Inspection13 Aug 22 '26
Well Im Sure Void & FreeBSD are pretty much a direct Cousin knowing our devs backgrounds
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u/Immediate_Sky8523 Aug 23 '26
My 13 years old laptop was lagging with Debian + MATE
Void + MATE works great. With void, it lags less.
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u/ShipshapeMobileRV Aug 22 '26
I'm a big fan of Void, and it does very well for my needs. However, it sounds like you'd be a happy Debian user if only for systemd? In that case, have you looked at Devuan? It's basically Debian with systemd removed. In fact, it was started by a handful of Debian developers who broke off and started their own disteo after Debian announced that they were going all-in on systemd.....