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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

I use Void on my router:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/building-a-thin-itx-router/

It works really well. Runit is an interesting init system. I wish it was a little better documented.

I hope we start seeing hosted providers offering Void base images. I'm a little weary of the current state of Linux distros where everything new seems to be either Debian or RHEL based.

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Why did you choose Linux over OpenBSD? I'd choose pf over iptables, although nftables looks pretty neat.

I'm guessing they assumed that BSD would have a lesser chance of having drivers for the hardware in their router (or if their router is ARM-based: specifically supporting the router's exact+particular system board and configuration of hardware) compared to Linux. A priori, I would make the same assumption; when I hear "router", I think "oh, that'll need OpenWrt".

I was going to use either FreeBSD or OpenBSD, but no 802.11ac support in either. Actually I should have just went with it anyway. I could only get my car working in n mode and someone else who e-mailed me after finding that post said that particular Intel card doesn't work in AP mode in 802.11ac on Linux; had to buy a different card entirely.

For me it was mainly package management, and the unwillingness to get acquainted to a new userland.

But it has to be said, that void is pretty BSD-like, in some ways, and maybe someone will port pf one day (although I don't even know if that's possible at all...)

To address your last concern, I use Solus on my Laptop, it's also a fully independent distro. It comes in 3 flavours targeting the desktop. It feels really well build. The community and maintainers are very responsive.

Which part of http://smarden.org/runit/ and its sub-pages do you wish to be better? And how?

As I'm satisfied with the distros I normally use, Lite and mint, I didn't check anything else for a few years. So, I'll try this out. Thanks!

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