Breaking up with Void Linux

Over the past two or so years, I’ve been using Void Linux on all of my machines. Over time though, I’ve realized that the operating system is too esoteric.

The problem is that when I encounter an issue, the issue becomes overly complicated to the point where I end up spending too much time trying to solve it.

A good example of exhausting goes like this:

1. Some error arises on my system
2. I proceed to look up said error and get answers in common Linux distros. These answers won’t work for my distro.
3. I proceed to look up the error and add “Void Linux” to the end. Most of the time, without fail, there are either zero results, or the few results I get are either very old answers that no longer work, or somewhat new answers that just flat out do not work.
4. I realize the only way the problem will be solved is by meticulously looking over some of the common distro answers and refitting them to work on my operating system.
5. I scour multiple answers, making multiple attempts to fix the problem without any luck.
6. I get exhausted of looking and put off fixing it until I absolutely have to.

In this workflow, I absolutely despise having an issue on my computer. Before Void, I was running Arch Linux, and while I wouldn’t say I loved working through some issue and reading forums, I will say it was easier, more practical, and bearable. When you go through figuring out how to solve a problem on Arch, or more common distros, you’ll likely come across a forum post, where a user describes the situation you’re having, folks making suggestions, and then the gold - the fix. With Void, it’s like doing that, but hoping that there are equivalents that exist in the OS. If they don’t exist, it’s time to dig further!

In Arch, and common distros, solving a problem is more of a journey; not repetitive, circular headache of futile attempts.

Another issue I have in particular with Void is the void-packages repository. I play games online with friends sometimes, so I use Discord. The problem is, Discord is proprietary, closed-source software. Because of this, a binary is maintained on the void-packages Git repository. Cool, just like the AUR right? Wrong. Discord likes to push binary updates a lot on Linux. When this happens, the client will check and see if you’re running the latest binary. If you aren’t, Discord will not let you in. I dislike this design in general, but for a company based on selling your personal data, it makes sense. Anyways, this wouldn’t be such a problem if pull request and packages updates in void-packages didn’t take days to merge. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had Discord telling me I need to update my binary, only to try to update the void-package to be told there are no updates. I know there should be an update, so I go and look at the void-packages GitHub repository, and low and behold, there’s an open pull request from 2 days ago trying to merge the binary update, sitting. At this point, I now have to either a) update the binary in my local clone of the void-packages repository and make it match the PR, then update, or b) use Discord from the browser (which lacks features).

I realize that maintainers of Void are doing this out of their free time. I immensely respect the people who spend hours each week maintaining something for others to use. The problem is that I don’t have the time myself to maintain my instance of it, when it seems to require much more maintenance than Arch Linux.

All of this to say - it’s about time we break up. Void Linux was great, and I love the features it packs, but trying to use my systems with ease, especially on package updates, is becoming harder and harder with no end in sight. I plan on moving back to Arch Linux on my laptop and desktop once time permits.