Enter The Void

This gets back to my maind problem, but as a disclaimer, I am not a pro and I don't know basics of debugging. So don't take the stuff here as a matter of fact. I used Debian and Fedora for some time, maybe 3-4 years, alternating between the two. At first, my WIFI was not properly suppoerted on the old Debian kernel so I used the backports. I also experienced some kernel panics which I didn't properly know about. Then I finally moved to Fedora for an easier experience, the kernel panics were still present. Sometimes they would be fixed after an update and, sometimes they would get worse.

I think systemd reported something along the lines of a "read-only" files system or something. I couldn't even access the logs. It usually happened after having my laptop wake up from a suspend, and I noticed could prevent them using systemctl reset-failed, so it might've been a systemd issue, or maybe kernel problem. When I upgraded to Fedora 40, I had 4 kernel panics in 2 days. I even updated the whole system during that time to no avail, problems stayed. Two of the panics where even before I could login through the display manager. Not even a proper black screen of panic.

Be it an kernel issue or systemd, void had neither. It had a fairly recent version of kernel all the time, but it wouldn't change it so much. It also boasted from a different init system, runit.

To say it simply, because it fixed my problem. I have not had any kernel panics using void yet. I'm here to praise this piece of art.

Other than that, there were not a lot of online webpages about void, and they were not very easy to find. Also, while the documentation is good, it is not very straightforward.

Instalation was fairly easy, I just regred assigning too much space to / while void is so lightweight!

I first had lots of problems with setting up my wayland WM/DE. This is suggested in the wiki, but I now assume it is a must that you use gdm as your login manager instead of lightdm. For example, I could not either enter Gnome, Sway, or River through the normal login screen properly (Gnome on Xorg worked). I could start sway from tty, but then I could not see waybar at all. Also, I still can't use seatd-launch to start sway as guided here. I had some wireplumber/pipewire issues with sway but they got fixed after using gdm.

The runit init system is interesting, and the docs easily explain how to use it. I could not do so in my last systems.

Also, It is my first time using a rolling release distro. I did not update my system before installing some apps, and then I couldn't update anymore. This broke the whole system, but it was even before I could use it properly or read the docs, so I just reinstalled, and then I saw that you must run xbps-install -Su before installing anything.

For using wine you don't need libwine, just install wine and wine-32bit instead. A force reinstall might be needed after removing libwine.

If there is an issue with gnome-keyring-daemon on sway (there would be no pop up for password on my system), just pkill the process, run ssh-agent, and export the variables, it's easier than fixing the problem.

There are several other issues that I am not sure they lie with the voidlinux or my bad setup, but emacs crashes after loading ispell and it can not recognize my gpg keys properly so I'll have to change how I use my set-up. (jrnl is a cool python package for encryped notes.) Nautilus doesn't open properly in sway either, I use thunar for now.

The repositories can be changed easily and the default ones are "not" blocked in my home country, what a bliss! Fedora was very very bad in this regard.

updated at [2024-08-15 Thu] I experienced issues these days, see this for more. Also, I have come across cool stuff to add to my workflow, see (5) resource.

• Update your system.
• You can enable 32bit repo with # xbps-install void-repo-multilib.
• The IRC channel in Libera Chat is fun and friendly, check it out.
• What I've said is documented.

1. https://birabittoh.is-a.dev/blog/void-xfce/
2. https://mindsforge.com/Notes/VoidInstall (A great page)
3. https://gist.github.com/adnan360/6cba05a3881870bf4a9e3ab2cea7709e (I did NOT follow this)
4. https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway updated before [2024-08-15 Thu]
5. https://github.com/druskus20/dots (I will have to use some of the gold parts in) updated at [2024-08-15 Thu]

I will add my package and workflow suggestions soon, but here's a quick note:

Firefox has turned into a not so cool package as well.