Void Linux’s average rating soars high on DistroWatch, making it a must-try for advanced users. Learn why it is winning hearts.
I have not tried it yet. But it sounds quite similar to Alpine, using musl-c but not systemd. Is the main difference Alpine’s default reliance on busybox? I have to say,
xbpsis a rather unmemorable name for a package manager. One of Arch’s best decisions was to use the namepacman.I haven’t used Alpine much, but it seems targeted at server and embedded usecases. Void is decidedly a desktop distribution, and feels like Arch with a more powerful set of package tooling and runit instead of systems. From my limited experience, I’d be more surprised by someone running Alpine as their main OS than OpenBSD, whereas Void is almost accessible by comparison.
Alpine is mostly used for docker instances, but can also be used on bare metal, which is indeed what I do. It’s currently my main OS on one of my several laptops.
I’m sure it works well for that purpose, it’s just rare to see.