I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn’t matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can’t even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.
Windows Telemetry at first. Then Windows browbeating various products - “Edge please download Firefox” - Edge: “Why, I am better than Firefox” Me:“Do as I say” Edge: “But -blah blah nah” and so on. I know there are ways around it, but if someone can force an update against my will on my machine, it is not my machine. This leads to questions of what else can they do without my permission. Linux is my machine. I control when and how and what. Also customization.
Having to disable protected services to stop updates from rebooting in the middle of a nine hour encode was it for me. Checking on my encode at what should have been 90% and find my PC at the login screen was it for me. Handbrake works better for me in Linux, too.
98 for me. One day, it borked the file system one last time. Never looked back. Have to use Win 10 at work, though, and I hate how cumbersome and slow it is
I used a bootable Ubuntu usb to save the contents of my windows hard drive after it failed. I successfully brought the files onto an external drive and installed Linux after. It was so fun. It still is.
I use KDE Neon, but highly recommend Linux Mint for new users. I’m not in the computer industry, yet I have tried a lot of distros over the past ~15 years. Out of all of them, Linux Mint had the easiest setup by far. The drivers worked without difficulty, the installation was intuitive, the Timeshift app helped me undo any problems I created while tweaking the system, and forums.linuxmint.com is quite helpful. Compare this with KDE Neon, that had me using a second computer for hours to figure out how to get my specific wifi card drivers working. Now that I have had enough time to learn about Linux and troubleshooting, I prefer KDE Neon for the desktop environment, but Linux Mint really is so easy. Again, I highly recommend it.
i3/window manager. When I log in to gnome I feel like I’m being dragged through molasses. I have an anxiety attack every time I see a window floating in front of another. My wrists creak and crack as my hand dances between keyboard and mouse. It almost lessens my interaction with the linux community because so many people are passionate about and discuss desktop environments and yet I don’t really see one unless I’m having issues.
Laptop and Workstation run Fedora. Servers run Proxmox.
Can’t say that there is anything new and exciting. Big change for me has been that I have accepted flatpacks. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care about being a purist, don’t care about customizing and theming everything. I just want to use my computer.
I made the switch to Linux about 1.5 years ago. Never looked back. I started with Linux Mint and have been happy with it ever since. Now, I’m learning about Arch Linux and trying to make that my primary driver.
FYI, you don’t have to get a Steam Deck to try out gaming. I’m sure your current distro would support that quite well. But, if you’re looking for something that is portable, then I definitely recommend the Steam Deck. Now is a good time to get one, since they released a refresh with an OLED screen. Also, the Steam Deck runs on Arch Linux, so if you’re ever interested in checking that out, then definitely get a Steam Deck.
The repo is full of any software you might need, including proprietary (through xbps-src).
Everything just works, if it doesn’t it’s probably your fault.
It’s a rolling release distro, yet focused on stability and usabilty, so you won’t get the latest and greates, but instead builds that are known to be solid. For example the kernel, it’s not the latest, as is with Arch, but it’s maybe one or two minor versions behin. The same applies to software, they’re known to jump versions if the current build proves to be unstable.
Lightning fast boot up. It’s also the fastest distro there is, apart from the *BSDs.
Compiling and testing is a breeze thanks to xbps-src.
A lot of tools and scripts that make building templates for software not in the repo very easy.
Supports a lot of architectures. NetBSD is the only other POSIX OS that supports more architectures than Void.
There are other things, I’m sure, but these are the ones I can think of ATM.
it’s pretty much just arch without systemd then. which is enough of a dealbreaker for me, as I think that systemd is the best thing to happen to linux since sliced bread.
No, it’s not Arch without systemd. Arch breaks a lot more than Void does. Ask Void users when was the last time a Void update broke their system. I use it as a daily driver, plus for a lot of other things (at work and home) that are considered mission critical. I would never use Arch for that. Also, it’s faster than Arch, it supports A LOT more architectures than Arch does… or any other Linux distro for that matter (LFS excluded).
You should also probably try and see if the same thing happens in a VM. The flash drive might be failing and I don’t think Void does CRC checks of files when copying them… definitely not when funning them, like the installer for example.
EDIT: I remember the installer bringing me back to the partitioning setup, but that’s because I partition manually, not through the Void installer, so the installer thinks that that step is skipped. No worries though, just go to the end of the installer setup and continue with the provided settings. If an adequate target partition has been set, it will install Void.
Do you know any other distro that’s not LFS or Gentoo that still supports x86? I said a lot, not everything. Most distros don’t support anything below 64-bits.
A fork supported PPC up until a while ago. That project halted though. There was a new spin on it, can’t remember the distro’s name though.
xbps-src can cross compile for MIPS. There are no packages in the repo for MIPS though.
I run Guix System on my personal laptop and Project Bluefin on my work machine.
Guix is even easier to get started with now thanks to the Guix Packager , a web UI for writing Guix package definitions.
Project Bluefin auto-updates thanks to its use of container images deliver system updates. It’s also just a great platform to get started writing containerized apps, since it ships with rootless Podman by default and you can easily add new developer tools using just commands.
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