i actually documented something for once, so i could reference it myself later. asking for some feedback on this, but it is quite long so i get it if you don’t read it all or care. figured some newbie might stumble upon this in the future and get something out of it.

  • First of all, make sure you have the Void installation guide open. Most of this is just hand holding you through their instructions. For what it’s worth, I think it’s valuable to have another newb explain how they went about getting things done.
  1. Install latest ISO
  • Download the base image, which should look something like: void-live-x86_64-20210218.iso
  • If you’re doing this properly, ensure that the sha256sum.txt and sha256sum.sig files are authentic. The Void docs hold your hand for this step.
  1. Do the Disk Mounting Thingy
  • I use balena but you can use any other similar tool.
  1. Boot machine and change Boot Device List ranking to USB first
  • Shut computer off -> press Enter (that’s the key I spam for my ThinkPad, it might be different for your machine) -> move USB HDD up to #1
  1. Plug USB in and Boot up
  2. Select Enter on the first option: Void Linux (no RAM)
  • Or choose the RAM option if you want superspeed. It’s not really necessary and I get paranoid when doing things non-default.
  1. Configure the WIFI with wpa_supplicant

  • Create symbolic links and start the services

    sudo ln -s /etc/sv/dhcpcd /var/service

    sudo ln -s /etc/sv/wpa_supplicant /var/service

    sudo sv up dhcpcd

    sudo sv up wpa_supplicant

    ip link show

  • Configure your network now that we know the interface (for me, that’s wlp58s0)

    wpa_cli -i {wifi interface}

  • Within the wpa_cli interface, set up the network

    scan

    scan_results

    add_network
set_network 0 ssid "MYNETWORK"
set_network 0 psk "secret"

    enable_network 0
0K

  • Test your wifi

    ping google.com

  • Save your configuration

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp58s0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
  1. Enter the Void Installer
  • Do the thing (going to expand on this later, I actually feel like I should study this step and understand what it is I’m doing before I tell anyone to copy me).
  • For now, this video helped a ton.
void-installer
  1. Update the package manager
sudo xbps-install -u xbps
  1. Update the uhh rest of the stuff
sudo xbps-install -Su
  1. Restart the services:
xcheckrestart
  • On error, install the following dependency: xtools
    sudo xbps-install xtools
  1. Reboot to get latest kernel version after update
sudo shutdown -r now
  1. Install packages:
  • After install, I got started with: xorg, pulseaudio, i3-gaps, dmenu, alacritty, firefox, nnn, sxiv, Zathura, htop, node, rust, and ofc nvim. This will keep me going for a while.
sudo xbps-install -Su xorg pulseaudio i3-gaps dmenu alacritty firefox nnn sxiv zathura htop nodejs rustup
  1. On error, install the following dependencies:
sudo xbps-install base-devel libX11-devel libXft-devel libXinerama-devel freetype-devel fontconfig-devel
  1. Edit .xinitrc (in your home directory) to run i3-gaps on load
exec i3
  1. Update packages, just in case and reboot
  • Honestly, I just do this out of paranoia and habit. Every time I open a terminal session I just update everything.
sudo xbps-install -Syu

reboot
  • Some issues I faced dealt with audio, which I found was quite common. Ensure you have pulseaudio installed, and if that doesnt work, apparently alsamixer also works pretty well. Just make sure to change your i3 config (/.config/i3/config) to bind the alsamixer settings and not the default pulseaudio bindings.
    • Murks@discuss.tchncs.de
      111·
      1 year ago

      This makes lemmy almost not usable for me. If I sort posts by active or hot, I get 80% posts that are older than 2 years. Always with new comments.

      I belive that fixing the sorting algorithms is extremely important for lemmys success.

      • meteokr@community.adiquaints.moe
        1·
        1 year ago

        But if a post is receiving discussion, then it IS active. Back in the olden days we would waylay people for not using the search to find previous posts rather than make a new one. If a thread is active and relevant, its age shouldnt just blast it out of existence.

        The constant churn of “only new posts are relevant, anything older than a day is functionally archived” of the modern internet landscape is a bad thing in my opinion.

        • Murks@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          1 year ago

          Of course posts older than a day are still useful. But how useful is an experience report on an OS that is over 2 years old? I have no idea about Void Linux, but whenever I seek a tutorial on something, I limit the search to 1 year, because stuff changes. Take the discussions on VPNs recently for example. For many people a lot changed due to policy changes from some VPNs. All threads regarding those VPNs that are older than 3 months should be viewed as archived.

          One could argue that a post from programming humor is still as funny as it was 2 years ago. But I don’t want to see the same post over and over again, just because someone wrote a comment in it. And old posts aren’t gone and can be found if one wants to. But I don’t want posts to stay on my front page for years.

    • ugo@feddit.itEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      If memory serves, no systemd and musl as a first-class c std lib. Something of the sort.

      • Glitchington@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        They have a version with musl alongside a glibc version. Probably use the glibc version if you want to use any compatibility layers (like Proton in Steam).

    • flbnOP
      1·
      3 years ago

      how else can i set up wifi? i’ve always done it with wpa_cli, which is kinda unintuitive

  • flbnOP
    1·
    3 years ago

    btw, this is for an unencrypted UEFI installation. later, once i have my rice down pat, i will re-partition (and actually thoroughly document that) and encrypt my disk.

    i’m also interested in exploring a text editor. i love everything that vim and neovim give me, but sometimes i miss clion. it’s a lot of bloat, so i was thinking of picking up Kate and adding their vim bindings plugin. lmk if you have any alternatives you like!

      • flbnOP
        2·
        3 years ago

        i’m not sure about Kate but when i was first learning Rust, CLion tooling was a huge help in learning about what’s going on. the on-the-fly-analysis and macro expansions were really useful, but it’s just so resource heavy. i haven’t been able to get my vim setup to be as informative (probably a good thing, since i’ve been having to look through more docs), so really it’s just a convenience thing. it’s almost purely out of sheer laziness.

        i suppose now would be a good time to ask if you have any recommendations for me to get a similar experience out of Vim? like, i have the rust-analyzer plugin but i couldn’t get some features to work, like those macro-expansions i was mentioning, despite using the dedicated plugin required. i even got rust-analyzer to work on vsc, so i know that it works, i just need to hack at it a little more. tbh this comment kinda grounded me. if i didn’t respond to this, it might’ve taken some more time for me realize i was just making excuses for myself. it also gives me an opportunity to document my vim setup, which i would 100% want some feedback on.

        • nachtigall@feddit.de
          2·
          3 years ago

          Uh sorry, can’t provide any recommendations. Though I also really liked CLion’s features I settled with default language server features using vim-lsc and rls (because rust-analyzer is not available in my distro’s repos).

          I actually just thought you implied that Kate is more powerful than vim and was about to vehemently contradict you.

          But maybe the lemmings swam intelligence can help with your setup :D When you say you use the rust-analyzer plugin, do you mean coc-rust-analyzer.vim?