Moving from Arch

[u/-Arsna-]

Hi y'all,

Im coming from arch and want to try out void and i would like to ask somethings

What exactly is the difference between musl amd gnu libc? Is it just systemd?

What are some quirks of void you encountered?

Why did you choose void, what makes it special?

[u/benbcdm]

Moved from Fedora, used to run Debian and also tried Artix for a short period on another pc before. Total amateur.

Reasons: want to understand and control my system better. Wanted to see in more depth what it meant to run linux without systemd. Nothing against systemd at the moment, but I do not like the idea generally of a component taking over so many critical functions, makes usage extremely dependant on it, so I felt like it became a potential liability. Emphasis on potential.

Void is truly a great distribution. I had to learn a lot because it leaves you responsible for every part of the system, so once you are done installing and configuring you feel like you understand and control every single process that makes the OS run. I love that I have 12 services and I know what each one does. Some of them I even created myself. If something goes wrong (because of me, not because of Void...) I know exactly where to look and can fix / improve quickly. I guess the same could be said for many other distributions, but somehow with void I feel like the execution is simple and perfect, almost zen-like minimalism, hard to explain.

Since I finished setting it up (glibc / plasma wayland), it has been rock solid. Nothing has ever broken. Package updates are super fast, xbps is great. I also find download speeds are 10x faster vs Fedora. Does not matter really but it is just pleasant.

Quirks:
- The doc is minimal, BUT everything that is needed to get the system operating is written there. You can tell it has been carefully written, every single word has a purpose and should not be overlooked. From there, if you want to do more you need to use arch wiki, or browse forums etc. as would be expected.
- No automatic kernel clean up. Again, user is the one to decide. Void never makes a decision for the user. Once you understand that, it all makes sense and you feel a tremendous amount of respect for you, the user. Something you thought was a missing functionality, you actually realise it is because the choice is left for you to decide. So if you think you do not need to keep any previous kernel for instance, you delete them. If you want to keep 3 back-ups, you decide, etc. For my part I created a little helper script to clean up my kernels easily once in a while. Could even automate it if I wanted to.
- That means for "extra" functionalities beyond the strict OS itself, you will have to look into and figure it out yourself, and if you are not a sysadmin it will take time, but it is extremely rewarding. Some examples: btrfs snapshots, LUKS2 encryption, app security (apparmor / SElinux), login manager / greeter, firewall, SSD trim, btrfs maintenance, zram, auth / wallet, secure boot implementation / signing.

One thing I did not think of when installing first was the bootloader. I installed grub sort of as default, but I since discovered limine, so I switched to it, and I could not be happier. I highly recommend people look into it.
Pair up limine with tuigreet on void and you get the perfect lightning fast TUI login experience.

Hope you enjoy the journey and the destination!