Mint -> Void storytime

[u/SeanBlader]

Started on Ubuntu in like 2003, did Mint a few years after that. I wasn't a consistent Linux user because I'm a gamer. About 10 years ago now I setup Ubuntu to run as a Plex server, and it's been sitting constantly for years in the background, that was my first permanent Linux install. This year I tried CachyOS on my Alienware, and I knew I could move everything to Linux. Then did CachyOS on my gaming workstation. Then I moved the Plex Server to Fedora.

A few months ago I broke out my 13-year-old Dell XPS 13 9333 Developer edition, running Haswell and 8gb, spent $25 on a new battery, and put Mint on it. Mint today runs better than Ubuntu 13 years ago on the same hardware. It's backwards from historical software slowing down hardware, Linux is just super cool and getting better. It was solid, but just to keep the frames I ran YouTube at 720p.

Now this Haswell laptop has always struggled with the touchpad, Ubuntu, Mint, didn't matter, sometimes it works sometimes not. Fine I use a bluetooth mouse. Then I saw Jake@Linux talking about Void. I liked the idea of runit and comparing it to how offensive systemd is, and that's not even in regards to if it ever does age verification. So last night I bit the bullet and got Void Base on my Ventoy. Now I'm gonna be fair, I'm not a Linux sysadmin, but I've done some code, which of course is not remotely the same, so without Jake's 2 videos and Gemini's help I wouldn't have gotten to this point, had to get through configuring bluetooth, touchpad, and sound, and it all works perfectly now. So here I am running Void with gnome, which is fast and outstanding. It's under 9gb on disk, it uses about half the ram Mint used to, I even upgraded to kernel 7.2 because of the swap improvements and now Void doesn't even need it, and I can stream YouTube at 1080p without the fan spinning up.

Honestly Void has been an improvement over Mint as much as Mint was over Ubuntu, super cool. Nice work to the team.

[u/Sad-Cod-9584]

Welcome to the void! Happy for you that your "old" hardware runs well again. As a side note, void is stuck on older versions of gnome because everything after 48 depends on systemd, so you won't get significant updates to the desktop.

[u/SeanBlader → u/Sad-Cod-9584]

Oh, thanks for the heads up, that's a bummer. Guess I have some DE experimenting to do, I've only so far seen KDE, Cinnamon, and gnome, except Unity but fortunately that went away.

[u/ItzNotJacob1 → u/SeanBlader]

Try XFCE (not serious, try it if you want to)

[u/Simple_Hamster_4096 → u/ItzNotJacob1]

I use Void musl XFCE - my aged hardware appreciates it, and so do I...

[u/ItzNotJacob1 → u/Simple_Hamster_4096]

I use xfce on my Lenovo G580 Aand G50-80 - two childhood laptops. My G580 kept freezihg on the file explorer because of a qc timeout, how did i know? - Because dmesg errored on a qc timeout!! So i just disables probing for ata1.01 and the boot time went from 27 seconds to 5-7 seconds. Same for my G50-80, but it didn't have that qc timeout. They use void btw

[u/0bWAN-1 → u/ItzNotJacob1]

My favorite! I've installed and configured many other desktop environments; IMHO, nothing comes close to XFCE in speed, stability, and ease of use. There are many accomplished desktops. Many offer a ton more eye candy than XFCE. But for a daily driver, XFCE is the ultimate desktop available. Especially for users just beginning on a Linux path.

[u/ItzNotJacob1 → u/0bWAN-1]

XFCE is a super great DE and i urge anybody reading this to go try it out, from my experience there are many themes you can use as many people build themes for GTK2/3/4. While yes, the default look might be a bit ugly (for me it's not, i like it but i'd use other themes) that can be easily changed. The stability is key, because some DE's just break on you for no reason, and i haven't had any problems with XFCE because it releases updates when they are ready (just like Debian (?) pretty sure, could be wrong), and the hardware availability is insane. It states 1GB on the website but if you use Alpine + only the 6 (actually 5 if you dont count xfdesktop) packages that make up the core DE can make the idle RAM usage even under 90MB, which while yea it might be a bit unfair I still think that's good for a full featured DE like XFCE, oh and it also occupies less than 500MB with Xorg.. The whole DE is full featured while being lightweight and that's what i like, it's very flexible. You can even swap out the window manager if you'd like without anything breaking, just make sure to set restart immediately on xfwm4 to None (or however it is to disable it) and add your WM to the startup list, tho some xfwm4 features might not work like compositing that one is an easy fix as just installing picom and configuring it depending on what type of hardware you have.

Summary, XFCE is the greatest (in my opinion) as for me it is a combination of speed, stability and... ease of use.. just like you! :D Well, this is the longest paragraph i've written, though i might have some mistakes in there. Do keep in mind that this is just my opinion so take what i wrote with a grain of salt.

- Jacob

[u/Sad-Cod-9584 → u/SeanBlader]

If you're willing to try something completely different, niri with noctalia on void is incredibly awesome

[u/profeshamat → u/Sad-Cod-9584]

Because of this I tend to stick with Cinnamon on Void. It lets me enjoy some of the GNOME things I like (some of the software) without the mess that the GDM systemd dependency issue is causing.

[u/xJayMorex]

 without Jake's 2 videos and Gemini's help I wouldn't have gotten to this point

Have you ever baked a cake?

[u/Simple_Hamster_4096]

Congratulations!

The flavor of your story essentially isn't much different from most everyone who has adopted Linux...

Users evolve with Linux across years, decades, of use...

Try Void musl - your old hardware will love it even more...

[u/xcocco]

Personally I run Void Linux on modern hardware too bacause I feel like when using Windows, or bloated linux distros like Ubuntu, I'm capping the actual hardware potential hahahah

[u/0bWAN-1]

I couldn't agree more, except for your self-evaluation. The statement: I am not a Linux Admin. Likely meant to display humility. If you truly believe you are lacking in knowledge or ability, IMHO, you are indeed a Linux administrator! Top to bottom, front to back. Just the fact you took the time to gain a thorough knowledge of the differences between systemd and runit displays to me that you are more advanced than you think. I'm retired after 45 years as a self-employed systems admin servicing small-to-medium-sized businesses. I have hired and trained numerous people. Many moved on to positions with larger businesses. Although I hated to see many move on, I would never hold anyone back from achieving the highest level possible. I'm confident telling you if you worked for me, I would be extremely proud of your accomplishments. It is always good to maintain a proper ego empathy balance. But I can't help but feel you may have a tendency of belittling yourself too often. We are what we say we are. I certainly could be wrong, reading too much into a brief statement. Great work! I suggest you completely master Void Linux. The Void developers are seriously talented, or should I say gifted? There are skilled craftsmen in every walk of life. But in every profession there are always a handful of “artisans” or “artists,” if you will. Whenever a group of artists join forces and pool everything they have into a single-minded project, inevitably pure magic will be the result. This is the true essence of the open-source community. You, sir, fit like a glove! Be well.