They use it for development now.

No AI.

I’ll stick with 3.x, since they started using AI in 4.0 - or use Tenacity, of course.

I wasn’t able to find anything, but I may have missed it. Clearly it was technically possible, so I have to assume a business decision.

They used to support it, but they gave it up. So I no longer support them.

I’ve used it for quite a few years on several machines, and I love it. It probably shouldn’t be anyone’s first distro, but if you’re comfortable with basic Linux tooling or willing to teach yourself, it can be a great for personal use or a server.

As an example, the installer only handles some common setups. If you want a different setup (e.g. full-disk encryption) you can follow a guide, but it’s going to assume you know (or can learn) how to create partitions, for example. Personally, I follow the guide rather than using the installer even for common setups, because it reinforces knowledge of the basic tools, and it exposes the relatively simple job a Linux installer actually does: create partitions, create filesystems, mount them, and install packages. The real Void Linux install is in a single command, which is just telling its package manager (XBPS) to install one package, and that package in turn depends on (installs) the kernel, userland tools, and other necessities.

Not every part of a “standard” distro will be there, but it probably won’t affect you much, unless you’re working on the distro itself. systemd isn’t there, but packages in the repos will have runit services, and it’s easy to create services for software you install manually - usually just one line. If you use a desktop environment like KDE, that will hide most of the differences at a higher level.

There won’t be as many random guides tailored to Void Linux, of course, but Void mostly sticks to standard Linux tooling, so guides from most other distros usually work just fine, and you just ignore the specifics of systemd. I rarely need to tweak system services. The developers do a good job.

Compared to Tumbleweed, it’s a lot simpler. Simpler than Arch, too. I’ve found it more reliable and faster than both, but that will depend on your setup and your priorities. Either option would be good for “normal” usage or gaming. (Not sure of your intended use…)

Updates for big security-sensitive packages are done quickly - kernel updates, Firefox, etc. are often out within a day. Larger efforts like KDE updates can take a month or two. Less commonly used packages may depend on community help. (I find the same to be true in bigger distros…)

19 and 18 are out of order, but computers don’t sort Roman numerals numerically unless you make them. They’re sorted correctly alphabetically.

Would you mind sharing the revelation? I’m not sure yet what’s infuriating. The files are sorted by year primarily; the only tie is 1950, and “I” (in “XIX”) comes before “V” (in “XVIII”) alphabetically, so they’re in order as well.

And now the comments are closed. Embarrassing.