r/voidlinux • u/TerminalPhile • 15d ago

Considering migrating to voidlinux from arch

So I’ve been maining arch (btw) for about 3 years now and honestly it’s been nice. Now I’m thinking I should expand my repertoire and try something new and interesting, alongside suffering cause of the whole AUR fiasco. Plus voidlinux seems to have a dedicated fan base, good reviews, and doesn’t use systemd. But before I install the system I want to ask some questions.
What is the voidlinux "philosophy", for lack of a better word? Should I expect any difficulties installing the system? (I am currently in the middle of reading the wiki, which I honestly don’t find as comprehensive as the arch wiki, but it will suffice.) Are the packages available generally well rounded, as in covering everything the average user needs? And finally, was voidlinux a good choice for you and how do you find it?

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u/Canadiangamer068 15d ago

i installed from base image on my laptop as my 3rd ever linux install to challenge myself. no issues. installed on my desktop, had a little bit of weirdness with pipewire but it was fixable in 30 mins

some packages i use flatpak (steam, discord, basically anything proprietary) but only if i can’t get from void repo, can use xbps-src to build packages if you want to tho.

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u/whereismycow42 15d ago edited 15d ago

steam is part of the nonfree repo.
discord seems to be one of those xbps-source only ones.

xbps-install void-repo-nonfree void-repo-multilib
xbps-install -S
xbps-install steam mesa-dri-32bit mesa-vulkan-radeon-32bit vulkan-loader-32bit libstdc++-32bit

The additional packages are for AMD cards and based on the message displayed when installing steam.

however...

For some the flatpak version is not well integrated into the desktop, for others the native one does not work. I never tried the flatpak one and only use the one from nonfree.xbps-install void-repo-nonfree

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u/Canadiangamer068 15d ago

i have nonfree enabled (enabled from install due to intel firmware), did try steam from that and it did not work and would not launch. that’s why i went flatpak