Well! the past few days I posted nothing here and trust it was for a very good reason, I mean it was worth it for. God from where should I start…
Let’s go with my very recent experience with the mighty Void Linux, yes I tried and in fact… for a few hours… I was Arch Linux free! Yes, you heard me right friend, I formatted my device and installed Debian and Void Linux, and NO Arch Linux… and I survived! Okay, no kidding, I’ll talk about why I needed Debian soon, but the main OS at that moment for me was Void. Now Void Linux was way too easy to install, for someone who’s used to the Arch Linux installation process (without archinstall script) the process of installing Void went extremely fast and easy, everything was straightforward, no hassle, even the GRUB installation I had nothing to do with. So my first thought about Void Linux, it is the easiest and fastest to install. However, in Linux, you never get the full package (unless you’re using Arch obviously, just use Paru). There always be a thing about the distro you’re up to try, which can be either the “ah shit I’ll never use this crap again I should go back to Arch,” or “ah damn this shit is good I’ll never leave it again, this is exactly what I need!” And when I started using Void, I had the second reaction on a very high level. I was like once I moved from Windows to Ubuntu my PC felt smoother, once I moved from GNOME DE to i3wm I was mind-blown with how fast my PC became and how low the RAM usage was. Once I moved to Arch, it was like fucking heaven, Ubuntu with a window manager was shit compared to how awesome Arch was, and above all that, the AUR, oooohhhh booyyy, I was like that’s it, it can’t possibly be any better than this… « Void Linux: Hold my beer… » 60 MB RAM usage, till now I am unable to process that result. I came to realize how bloated systemd is, and from then I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I go back to a system that uses it. The xbps package manager was great, even though I’ve lost the advantage of the AUR, but let’s be honest… in a minimal setup I don’t download software that much, and since 90% (at least) of every minimal setup is basic packs, I didn’t really miss the AUR that much. Now I’m not on Void Linux, and the reason for that is… I wasn’t exactly ready to have such a minimal setup. I was really used to stuff like tmux and kitty to be running out of the box, but in Void even with my configs applied I kept facing some issues. The last one was when I messed up something in the sudoers file which led to me stuck in the TTY after a reboot, not even the TTY shell, I was stuck in the login input thingy, and I couldn’t use it anymore, and that’s when I realized it ain’t the time for Void yet, definitely giving it a second try in the future.
Now let’s talk a bit about Artix, another systemd-free system, in an Archy fashion, the installation was such a pain in the ass since I really forget how to set up GRUB for UEFI systems, and I messed up a few times before I got it right. Once I did, I started with a very minimal suckless setup, it was awesome, until I couldn’t get Spotify to work and had to use the browser to stream music. Since my main browser (Brave) ain’t supported from the platform, I had to use a second browser just for music, and even with more than one browser in use with multiple tabs and a tmux server and VSCode and all… I couldn’t manage to use over 50% of my RAM, and my CPU is bored as heck. I have a lot to say about my Artix setup for now and the issues I had with it and why I can’t wait to finally manage to get Void to work so I can leave Arch for good. But I think I have said enough for today, if you made it all the way here, thank you so much friend, it really means a lot to me, take care of yourself, and till we meet again, farewell.
Seth.