Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by cgb223 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

cgb223

What is the motivation for supporting MIPS here?

I can't think of a single system that runs MIPS instructions.

Also, what does this distro do differently from the other 1000+ distos?

Why VOID? Why not something else?

View on HN

I was drawn to it because it doesn't use systemd. (There seem to be a lot of people who dislike systemd.) Void uses runit instead of systemd. This has made it (for me at least) easier to use than Arch/systemd.

It was also one of the first to adopt LibreSSL.

The main downside for me is I have to manually install browsers. Void's packages for desktop software is sometimes out-of-date. But, I'm willing to overlook it because of all the other positives.

Of course, systemd is not the only option on Arch nowadays.

* https://framagit.org/taca/archnosh

Thanks for that. It says: "In other words, one can benefit from existing systemd unit files through automatic conversion in many cases." I'm worried it means, "many, but not all" cases.

There is also Manjaro Openrc. But, my buggy experience with it made me decide to go with a distro designed from scratch to use a different init system. Do you use Archnosh on a daily basis? Any issues converting systemd unit files over to nosh?

I don't use Archnosh because I do not possess an Arch Linux system. I do use the nosh toolset on a daily basis on Debian, FreeBSD, TrueOS, and OpenBSD.

I don't think that the conversion process not being capable of automatically converting every possible unit, just most of them, is something that should worry you. I suggest that you begin by reading the manual page on the subject as well as the sections on conversion in the nosh Guide and the worked example in the blurb:

* http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/convert-systemd-units....

* http://jdebp.info./Softwares/nosh/guide.html

* http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/worked-example.html

That there are some outliers doing oddball things that this will not cover, requiring you to get your hands dirty writing run+stop+start+restart programs, is only a worry if you worry about writing such programs in the first place. If that is a worry, then observe that you have the same worry with runit. Ask yourself if you are worried about this with runit. (-:

* http://jdebp.info./FGA/run-scripts-and-service-units-side-by...

* http://jdebp.info./Softwares/nosh/guide/creating-bundles.htm...

At the time of writing, the nosh toolset has just over 540 pre-supplied service bundles, not counting log and etc services, from ModemManager through initctld to zfsd.

An interesting and somewhat topical example of the automatic conversion in practice was when I took the now-infamous example of a systemd unit that declared User=0day, ran it through the convertor, and started the resultant service. You can see what happened, and (more importantly) what did not happen:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681857

Other examples:

* mailcatcher.service: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/200281/5132

* sickbeard.service: https://askubuntu.com/a/617822/43344

You're right about converting init files not being a problem. Looking back, it was a stupid statement on my part. Even converting the few services I run to nosh/s6/runit/etc. from systemd wouldn't be a problem... and it would be fun.

What I really want to say is: Arch is heavily tied to systemd and I don't want to use any systemd-based distro, even if I can run something alongside it.

Another option (albeit fairly new) is Artix, which is an Arch-based distro with OpenRC. It seems to have alternate repos for the base system while still having the default Arch repos for "community" and "extra" (as well as AUR compatibility, of course). I had some trouble using the graphical installer when trying it out on a spare hard drive, but booting the text image and just doing an Arch install as normal with pacstrap (which I prefer a anyhow) worked smoothly, and I haven't had any issues with it after a couple weeks trying it out.

https://artix-linux.github.io/migrate/

(Writing this from a Void Linux installation:) I don't know about Chromium, but Firefox 55 was no more than a week late, which I can totally live with.

If you download a Mozilla build of Firefox into somewhere user-writable, like ~/opt/, it will update itself.

You're correct. In the past the Firefox updates were very late sometimes (based an anecdotes I've read), but the situation has improved and should keep improving as more people adopt Void.

(I manually install Google Chrome and Opera. It's difficult for package managers to maintain them because of licensing and other issues.)

> This has made it (for me at least) easier to use than Arch/systemd

Not to open up that bag of worms, but I haven't heard anyone say Systemd is harder to use. It was made to actually make it easier.

On second thought, you're right. The statment is wrong on my part. Systemd seems to have pleased the Arch developers and made their lives easier.

I was trying to say: Void seems easier to use and stable.

Thanks for pointing this out. Sorry for my carelessness.

(I still would never use a systemd-based distro. I've had fewer problems since leaving it. And I've read too many horror stories to go back. And I suspect it led to many if the problems I had installing and booting. Void has a smaller community than Arch and Ubuntu, yet installs and biots up faster on my junky machines than Arch and Ubuntu. Granted, I can't blame systemd for this.... but I'll include it anyway in the lineup of suspects.)

I'm willing to admit it could be laziness on my part. It could also be I'm doing something wrong.

The info on this page for systemd: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd#Writing_unit_fi... seems harder for me to understand than the info on runit: http://kchard.github.io/runit-quickstart/

The Arch wiki doco is also wrong, which probably does not help. There's a glaring error in the first paragraph there. There are in fact nine places where system-level unit files are searched for, not two. Three are in the systemd doco. Three are intentionally undocumented. Two are build-configuration-dependent and usually the same as some of the others. And one was erased from the doco for an clearly invalid reason.

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/systemd-documentation-errata.html#Missi...

"I was drawn to it because it doesn't use systemd."

You know, Gentoo, which is way more widely used than Void, and more mature than Arch, gives you the option of going without systemd.

Don't I have to compile everything on Gentoo before installation?

It's basically what people imagine arch as (minimal), with a BSD influence, and it's modern and supported.

If you've gotten addicted to Free/OpenBSD, it might make linux palatable to you.

A very large number of home routers run Broadcom MIPS processors.

Not just Broadcom, but plenty of other networking SoCs use MIPS --- and in big-endian mode too. They're probably the only commonly encountered BE systems today.

> They're probably the only commonly encountered BE systems today.

Freescale's embedded PowerPC (e500 et. al) controllers are used in automotive powertrain ECUs (those that do not use TriCore), though it's debatable whether this counts as common.

IBM mainframes are big endian. You might say commonly encountered, depends on what circles you run in.

No systemd. Some folks will appreciate that.

Gentoo also doesn't force systemd.

Devuan also, although their initial release took ages...

Well, Debian has been known to take their time with releases, as well. One might say the Devuan developers just uphold an honored tradition. ;-)

(Just to be clear, the resulting releases have - for me at least - usually been worth waiting for.)

I met Richard Stallman in 2013. He used a Lemote Yeelong which was powered by a MIPS Loongson CPU.

Yes, what's funny about that is that is a Chinese designed processor which at first refused to pay royalties to MIPS. FYI for whoever: MIPS (the company) had major financial issues and was purchased by Imagination tech in 2013. But their patents ended up with a group of companies, including some which went to ARM. MIPS as at one point the fastest CPUs (from a millions instructions per seconds stand point) you could buy, and were in high-end SGI boxes.

I saw him recently. He is using a ThinkPad these days, probably one of those refurbed and reflashed ones with a free BIOS.

Yeap. Thinkpad X60, running libreboot and Trisquel: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

In large part because someone stole his bag, computer and all.

For one, VOID has a unique package management system [1].

[1]: https://www.voidlinux.eu/usage/xbps/

It is written somehwere that this was the motivation for creating this Linux distribution. The author wanted to work on his own package manager.

What makes this "distro" more interesting than all the others IMHO is that the author is a former BSD committer.

Why is that a good thing? There's network effects to package managers. Using one of the common ones is beneficial.

I'm guessing they looked at other package managers, didn't like a bunch of decisions, and decided to write their own: XBPS claims it's totally compatible with POSIX/SUSv2/C99 standards, and released with a Simplified BSD license (2 clause). Other features: https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/XBPS#Features

From what I've read, Void was created as a testing distro for XBPS before it was merged into a BSD.

Might be wrong on that though.

I don't think any *BSD uses xbps - sadly.

Huh, I guess not. Strange, I could've sworn I read somewhere that was the case.

It's very easy to write templates for new packages and the maintainers stay really busy, so I've found that void has more packages in the main repo than almost anything else, despite its lesser popularity.

The motivation comes down to little more than a couple of the main Void developers owning a witiboard. Perhaps there's other hardware floating around but there was quite a bit of discussion on IRC surrounding the witi.

Forgot to mention: void also provides musl linked binaries for all packages.

So kinda like Alpine, but you can choose between glibc and musl.

Cheap wireless routers?

I have a 'smart' TV running Android that has a mips processor.

An actual TV itself, or do you mean the Android box connected via HDMI?

The TV itself.

Sane defaults.

crappy routers.

Apparently you aren't familiar with high end routers and network accelerator hardware.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com