Void Linux is an independent

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

that uses the X Binary Package System (XBPS) package manager, which was designed and implemented from scratch, and the

runit runit is an init and service management scheme for Unix-like operating systems that initializes, supervises, and ends processes throughout the operating system. Runit is a reimplementation of the daemontools process supervision toolkit that r ...

init system In Unix-based computer operating systems, init (short for ''initialization'') is the first process started during booting of the computer system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direct ...

. Excluding binary kernel blobs, a base install is composed entirely of free software (but users can access an official non-free repository to install proprietary software as well).

History

Void Linux was created in 2008 by Juan Romero Pardines, a former developer of

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

, to have a test-bed for the XBPS package manager. The ability to natively build packages from source using xbps-src is likely inspired by pkgsrc and other BSD ports collections. In May 2018, the project was moved to a new website and

code repository In version control systems, a repository is a data structure that stores metadata for a set of files or directory structure. Depending on whether the version control system in use is distributed, like Git or Mercurial, or centralized, like Subver ...

by the core team after the project leader had not been heard from for several months. As of April 2022, Void is the third highest rated project on

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...

with a score of 9.09 out of 10.

Features

Void is a notable exception to the majority of Linux distributions because it uses

as its

init In Unix-based computer operating systems, init (short for ''initialization'') is the first process started during booting of the computer system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direct ...

system instead of the more common

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. Its main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions; Its primary component is a "system and service manager ...

used by other distributions such as Arch Linux,

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

. It is also unique among distributions in that separate software repositories and installation media using both

glibc The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++ (and, indirectly, other programming languages). It was started in the 1980s by ...

and

musl musl is a C standard library intended for operating systems based on the Linux kernel, released under the MIT License. It was developed by Rich Felker with the goal to write a clean, efficient and standards-conformant libc implementation. Ov ...

are available. Void was the first distribution to have incorporated

LibreSSL LibreSSL is an open-source implementation of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The implementation is named after Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the deprecated predecessor of TLS, for which support was removed in release 2.3.0. The OpenB ...

as the system cryptography library by default. In February 2021, the Void Linux team announced Void Linux would be switching back to

OpenSSL OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping or need to identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTT ...

on March 5, 2021. Among the reasons were the problematic process of patching software that was primarily written to work with OpenSSL, the support for some optimizations and earlier access to newer algorithms. A switch to OpenSSL began in April 2020 in the

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

issue of the void-packages repository where most of the discussion has taken place. Due to its rolling release nature, a system running Void is kept up-to-date with binary updates always carrying the newest release. Source packages are maintained on GitHub and can be compiled using the xbps-src build system. The package build process is performed in a clean environment, not tied to the current system, and most packages can be cross-compiled for foreign architectures. As of April 2017, Void Linux supports Flatpak, which allows the installation of the latest packages from upstream repositories.

Editions

Void Linux can be downloaded as a ''base'' image or as a ''flavor'' image. The base image contains little more than basic programs, which users can then configure an environment for themselves. The flavor image contains a pre-configured Xfce desktop environment.

Cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfa ...

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

, LXDE, LXQt,

MATE Mate may refer to: Science * Mate, one of a pair of animals involved in: ** Mate choice, intersexual selection ** Mating * Multi-antimicrobial extrusion protein, or MATE, an efflux transporter family of proteins Person or title * Friendship ...

, and

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

used to be offered as pre-packaged live images, but are no longer offered "in order to decrease the overhead involved with testing." The live images contain an installer that offers a ncurses-based user interface. The default root shell is

Dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Derivatives

Void Linux for PowerPC/Power ISA (unofficial)
is a fork of Void Linux for

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

and

Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...

. It supports

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

and

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

devices,

big-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most sig ...

and little-endian operation, and

and

. Void-ppc maintains its own build infrastructure and package repositories, and aims to build all of Void Linux's packages on all targets. It is a fork largely because of technical issues with Void Linux's build infrastructure. Project Trident was a

based on Void Linux, but is now discontinued.

Reception

Jesse Smith of DistroWatch notes fast boot times which he credited to runit, but also notes that documentation and bug-testing are lacking.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{Linux distributions Independent Linux distributions Linux distributions Linux distributions without systemd Rolling Release Linux distributions