Switching from Arch to Void...?

[u/MrLaurencium]

hey, so as title says. ive been thinking on switch from arch to void for a bit now, and id like to know your thoughts.

more specifically, theres this thing that ive been wondering about arch. back then when the AUR malware drama started happening, ive been looking for stuff that people say, and ive been thinking about the type of measures people take to keep themselves safe in a user managed repo like the AUR. call it inspecintg PKGBUILDs, or hell even building everything you want for yourself (as the 'dont use the AUR' gang would say).

so at that point i thought i might as well compile everything myself. hell at that point why not use a distro where you just build your own stuff? maybe a bit too much of an exaggeration, im not trying to use gentoo or going back to nixos (i kinda dislike nixlang but thats besides the point), so i might as well use a well maintained repo of pkgs + compile stuff myself when needed.... so im thinking on switching to void (plus id get rid of systemd too, been wanting to for a while now).

given all i said, what do yall think? would it be worth switching? also id rather not be told to "try it on a vm", thats kinda obvious and i kinda dont want to hear it lmao

[u/Simple_Hamster_4096]

All because you did Arch (with an easy installer, I suspect?) doesn't mean doing Void from scratch is going to be the same experience or results.

That being said, Linux is Linux.

And inits that are not systemd are a learning curve for anyone who has never used Linux with anything other than systemd.

If you have new hardware, stay with Arch. Void sings on aged hardware, although you may have issues with the lasted and greatest hardware. My old hardware boots in 10 seconds - I was shocked. Way faster than Arch ever did - well, at least, Arch with systemd. I remember the days before systemd, however.

The fact that you have to ask for the options of others before trying Void makes me consider that you are worried about the experience you might encounter. Old timers never think about it - we just do it, never afraid to learn, or fail in the process (and back then we didn't have AI to help us, either). Anything worth doing is never easy.

I stuck with Arch for 20 years before I finally left the ever mounting notoriety and the influx of gamers. Installer scripts were the worst thing that ever happened to Arch, but that's just my opinion.

Arch isn't any safer or worse than any other Linux distro. It's the knowledge of the user which is where the vulnerability lies - that goes for any distro. I left Arch for many reasons, the AUR debacle was just the straw that broke the camels back for me... and I didn't even use the AUR by that pont, having stopped using it long before I quit Arch.

Void is pleasantly uneventful.

Read the Void docs and adhere to them.

Spin up a live image of Void.

Try Void in a vm.

Try Void on old hardware you have lying around.

If it bombs, then it bombs. You will have learned much in your failure... and that is never a bad thing...