r/voidlinux • u/Legitimate_706 • 1d ago

Switching to void?

/r/LinuxUsersIndia/comments/1x5w75w/switching_to_void/
3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

1

u/N45SERBD 1d ago

What do you use your system for?

1

u/Legitimate_706 1d ago

For a machine for tinkering I try different languages, trying breaking it, understanding how it works. I can learn that from almost any linux distro i know that, but void linux being a newish community driven distro I wanna try and tinker with it. So i just wanna mess with it.

4

u/N45SERBD 1d ago

Yeah void is pretty good then, it’s more diy than arch but is also more stable in my experience

1

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 1d ago

Void Linux is a really cool OS, runit can be quite hard to learn as it is very apart from other init systems with the manual symlink. For audio, pipewire is not worth the hassle, install the pulseaudio-daemon and alsa-utils, then use alsamixer to unmute all channels with M, then add the alsasound service to the boot runlevel.

12

u/Borderlinerr 1d ago

There's nothing wrong with pipewire. You just install it and run it

1

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 1d ago

How do you start it on runit, since it needs to be started as a user-service

10

u/Borderlinerr 1d ago

Don't start it via runit. Start it as auto-start in your session. Pipewire's internal scripts do the rest.

1

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 1d ago

When using Parabola OpenRC, I would add /user/bin/pipewire & and /usr/bin/wireplumber & to .xinitrc (I use DWM) and this would result in audio randomy cutting out on some session starts or bluetooth failing to connect proprerly. I'm not sure why this was but it may be something to do with not starting it as a user service.

4

u/Borderlinerr 1d ago

No need to run wireplumber. Follow void docs (copying those two configs system-wide) and just run pipewire at start. Nothing else is needed at all. No need to enable any services.

2

u/Canadiangamer068 1d ago

yeah exactly this. wireplumber is started by pipewire using the setup in the docs. also starts pipewire-pulse interface if following recommended setup

here’s the link to the docs

2

u/Legitimate_706 1d ago

I don't know about wayland but on X11 i just put it on my auto start file. Pipewire launches wireplumber. So you only need like two lines pipewire and pipewire-pulse

1

u/hard0w 1d ago

Just run a user runsvdir on session start. This is how I manage userspace services.

1

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 1d ago

Interesting.

2

u/hard0w 1d ago

To elaborate, I've made run files for pipewire, noctalia, linux-wallpaper-engine, podman + some containers etc. I store them in $HOME/.config/sv and link them to $HOME/.local/service. When my user starts a river session, river will run runsvdir -P $HOME/.local/service and the WM (rill).

5

u/ShipshapeMobileRV 1d ago

I thought runit was insanely simple.

Just make a symlink in /var/service/ for anything you want runit to handle. You can create your own script, mark it executable, and symlink it there and runit manages it just like it does everything else. If you no longer want runit to handle it, remove the symlink.

Commands to check status, start, stop, pause, temporarily stop, etc. are also pretty intuitive.

Then again, I came from FreeBSD and was already used to BSD style inits. I suppose if someone has only regularly used systemd then runit might seem foreign.

2

u/no_suprisez 1d ago

I think what they meant is that runit is not mainstream. Memorising the systemd command is definitely harder than just some basic UNIX file operations.

1

u/p001b0y 1d ago

I have it on a couple Lenovo systems. One is a minipc and one is a ThinkPad L13.

I used the xfce live image for the minipc install and it was pretty straightforward getting everything up and running.

I wanted to go with Wayland for the ThinkPad and that was much more difficult for me until I built my own xfce-wayland bundled live image, which had a newer kernel and drivers.

1

u/Legitimate_706 1d ago

I also wanna try getting wayland running, maybe with somthing like sway. But I want to try some x server options first, like qtile, WMaker etc.

1

u/p001b0y 1d ago

If I remember correctly, the window maker package was incomplete but I could also be thinking of FreeBSD.

Sway and Niri work well. Xfce works ok with labwc on Wayland and I have been using it until I get Niri working the way I want it to. Xfce wayland is not feature complete yet.

1

u/Legitimate_706 1d ago

I agree, xfce on wayland needs some polishing. Labwc though is a good window manager on itself. I like sway on wayland because it's like one to one copy of i3 which has been my daily. I can just copy over my Config.

1

u/p001b0y 1d ago

Labwc is good by itself but the integration has issues, at least for me. One example:

Xfce keeps replacing my wallpaper with the built in one. The Xfce Desktop Settings app lets me select one of the other ones but they don't apply. Labwc can be configured to override the wallpaper using something like swaybg but it doesn't persist. It always reverts back to the built in wallpaper even when labwc autostart is configured.

2

u/PackRat-2019 1d ago

I put a delay on the swaybg in the autostart file -

# background

sleep 1s ; swaybg -m fill -i ~/wallpaper/red_forest.jpg &

After the xfce4 desktop is finished setting up - including the built-in wallpaper, swaybg will run and set a new wallpaper.

Works well enough until xfce4 releases their Wayland compatible window manager ( it's in the works).

1

u/p001b0y 1d ago

Thanks! Thats a good idea!