This meme was brought to you by an arch user desperately trying to justify the mental gymnastics of using systemd in their supposedly “keep it simple” distro
EDIT: I joke of course. If arch/systemd works well for you, that’s all that matters!
Why isn’t Manjaro the one in the meme?
Frankly I’d much rather have void. Super cool distro, a lot of things about it seem like an ideal fit for me, I just don’t really have the technical skill to get a minimal distro all set up the way I want it
Plus their logo is pretty. Which shouldn’t matter but like, look at it- it’s a cool logo!
Yes, the install process is difficult to perform. But once you do it, you’ll feel like a wizard. You learn so much from the process if you do a manual chroot install. It helps you understand how the installation process for other distros like Debian works. If you have some free time, I would recommend trying it in a virtual machine.
I tried when I set up my new laptop and definitely learned a ton, but eventually stalled at getting network manager setup so I could use GNOME settings to configure networks, and getting sound set up
I completely forgot about trying it in a VM, I may have to go give that a try!
If it had package kit implementation so I could use a graphical package manager/app store it’d basically be my perfect distro if I could get it set up the way I want. An independent distro, super elegant, if I understand right the packages are all vanilla, “stable rolling release”. I really like it, a minimal distro is just a bit beyond me skill-wise, and I’d miss having a way to browse native (non-flatpak) applications graphically
Sorry to hear about the network manager issues! I could be wrong on this, but I think Gnome is not the best supported DE in void - possibly because of how heavily tied it is to systemd. I wish I could help, but I still configure my wifi using
wpa_supplicant.conf. Maybe dbus wasn’t setup properly?Regarding audio, the pipewire documentation for Void is pretty good. It’s pretty thematic of the whole Void linux experience: you have to read the handbook and follow its steps closely, but it’s very well written and easy to understand. It can definitely be time-consuming as well though.
Void is definitely all the things you mentioned. I installed it on a few machines, the first in early 2020 and it has never given me an issue. Extremely stable and boring. I’m impressed that it has so many packages in its repository, but that’s a testament to how well
xbpsis written. But there are a few things missing since it’s fair from the mainstream, including packagekit. I had never heard of it before you mentioned it - I found a fork on github to support it, but it doesn’t look very well maintained.Meant to reply to this but it got burried-
Oh I fully just gave up 😅 the reason I didn’t get it figured out is cause I didn’t stick with it lol. My previous laptop had broken and I decided I wanted to just go ahead and be up and running on the replacement rather than tinkering with void setup. I might come back to it at some point, but it’s definitely beyond my competency. Especially since ideally I’d like to have luks encryption, which I know you can do, but not from the more basic install process if I remember right.
Network manager (so I could use GNOME settings to change networks), and audio through pipewire were the two remaining things. I gave setting up pipewire a try following a YouTube tutorial, but it didn’t work properly, and at that point I decided I just wanted to have a working laptop again after a couple weeks without. But I did learn a bunch! and got a lot more comfortable with the command line!
Package kit is what allows graphical software stores or graphical package managers to integrate with the native package manager backend if I understand right. I’d miss being able to browse native packages along side flatpaks.
I found that fork, but yeah I don’t think it works. There were also one or two graphical software stores specifically for xbps, but I don’t recall if they’re still maintained, and I don’t think there was a GTK option. Part of me desperately hopes someone will make a simple distro based on void that functions as a customized install, kinda like spiral linux or gecko linux, for debian and opensuse. Until then, I know that my perfect distro might be out there, if I can just successfully get everything initally set up 🥲
Maybe I’ll make an IRL linux friend I’m close enough to harass into helping me with it at some point lol. Hope you have a lovely day!
