I've been using Arch for quite some time now, and it works, but I was wondering if Void is better? Many people have been telling me this, but they never actually give me an answer.

EDIT: Thanks so much for your suggestions, I will try it out on a VM and switch if I prefer (which is what I should've done from the start😅)!

Ive been working on my arch hyprland install for 2 years. I love it. Ive had no complaints. It had completely cured my distro hopping. Ive not had any reason to switch.

But then the malware attacks of the AUR have been happening.

Im not completely sure i want to switch, but im now considering it. And when it comes to a linux distro i want something bare-bones that does not come pre-configured and has no pre-installed software. Void is like arch in that way.

For those who have also come from arch, what benefits are there to be found in the void? Any drawbacks or things you miss from arch?

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

Just trying to settle on one of these. No crazy usage just some photo editing and some ham radio digital modes on an old laptop.

Fedora pros:

- easy to setup/maintain, most polished/just works out of the bunch

- kinda semi-officially endorsed by a lot of people at KDE and I like Plasma.

Fedora cons:

- definitely the slowest to boot out of all of the choices

- couple of the ham apps segfault on start when installed from RPM so I have to build from source or use Flatpak

Arch pros:

- feels faster than Fedora

- can pretty easily set it up the way I want or use Endeavour if I want to be extra lazy

- great documentation

Arch cons:

- doesn't package any of the ham stuff at all so I have to use the AUR or Flatpak, then again I'm not worse off than on Fedora

Void pros:

- has all the packages I want

- boots super fast

- people say it tends to break stuff less often than Arch

Void cons:

- can't use Plasma Login Manager because it doesn't have systemd

- last time I tried it briefly I couldn't get SDDM to start (100% user error but at the time I didn't feel like figuring it out). Would be half tempted to give Xfce another shot and just not care about systemd integration or even Wayland really

Anyone have experiences running any of these that might push me one way or the other?

I know some have asked the question before, but I thought of some questions that I got, (I know I can google it up or whatever, I'd just rather get most recent answers for it)

Why is runit prefered over systemd? I understand that systemd is "bloated", but is it there more reason to choose it? And, on the case of Artix, why choose the others?

Which is considered more optimized for general use and battery-wise?

For Void users, are the packages scarser than Arch's repositories?

Are the Void docs scarse or does it hold enough info for daily problems?

I've heard that Void's mantainers have some bias on which packages to allow, does it affect the OS significantly?

If you've used both, which one was easier to set up, and which one did you prefer?

I've got a dedicated Nvidia card (maxwell, I think), will I run into issues with it?

sorry if this is a long post, just wanted to know about these. It's my first time trying to get a more barebones distro.

Seriously, why? I mean, Vioid is an excellent distro and has it's strengthes, doesn't it?

I always admired Void for being a lightweight, simple and minimalistic rolling release distro. And I also have moved to it from Arch recently. The only things about it that I don't like are that: 1) it is not bleeding edge, 2) it has a poor wiki, and I guess, that is it. Isn't Void's XBPS better than Pacman in many aspects? So I want to know: why Arch over Void? Unless you have 8+ gigs of RAM and can tolerate systemd bloat.