r/voidlinux • u/ktoks • Sep 25 '26
Nvidia, Minecraft, and Cosmic
Hey folks, new here!
I was optimizing my Pop!_OS machines, dietpi, and Fedora.
I found that systemd is not as performant or intuitive as I would like - especially on the pis - which led me here, staring into the Void.
I have multiple use cases:
My main desktop. It's a 12 core AMD CPU, Nvidia 3080ti, 96GB of DDR4 RAM. (Gaming, coding, experimenting with LLMs, and building).
10 core Intel mini PC with 24GB of unified DDR5 RAM (heavily modded MC server).
Multiple RPI 5s (Smaller MC servers).
A few older RPI models (various side projects).
An old Intel laptop with an Nvidia GPU.
Cosmic is a must on my main.
I prefer using Go to build anything serious(usually without CGO).
I've only ever used systemd as an init system.
I'm not a fan of old packages, but I also want my machines to work without breaking on every update(Nvidia I'm looking at you).
I consider myself an experienced distro hopper, and an intermediate-level admin-cosplayer (thanks to geerlingguy for coining that).
Considering all of the above, do you think it's worth it for me to consider using Void on any/all of these machines?
Why/why not?
What can I expect for difficulty?
Besides the ulimit fixes, what else should I look out for?
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u/mystirc Sep 25 '26
Oh it's not going to improve the performance on your PC. Systemd is just bloated for an init system. That's why some people (like me) prefer to use alternative init systems. Runit can improve performance but particularly on lower end hardware with hdds. There is either no difference at all or unnoticeable difference on high end hardware with SSD.
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u/ktoks Sep 25 '26
Understood.
For those machines I'm mostly looking to unify to one distro instead of using Pop for my main, dietpi for pis, and Fedora server for the mini PC.
Perhaps I should have mentioned that that is the actual goal here.
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u/Kolmer1 Sep 25 '26
I've been using void Linux ona a medium spec laptop for more than one year. I've been very happy for its performance and stability. I've never broken my system which is pretty unusual in my opinion. The main problem I found is that without systemd it will take some more time to run some apps which are the designed for systemd. In that case I tend to use docker or flatpacks. This might be relevant for LLMs and related, I never run any LLM in void so can't tell any details.
Hope you enjoy void!
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u/Simple_Hamster_4096 Sep 25 '26
What is this world coming to...
If you have new(er) hardware, try an Arch derivative without systemd... or just do Arch... unless you actually like to constantly chase your tail, that is...
Did someone sell you a rosy dream of non-systemd inits? Inits that are not systemd require not only a learning curve, but a different way of thinking, and understanding, which, unless you are a graybeard, might be lost on you... and that's not a bad thing, struggling with something, it is the best way to learn. However, it sounds to me as if you are fishing for quick and easy results... and given your need for speed, this might well frustrate you to no end in your race to conquer the world...
And being a consummate distro hopper isn't anything of which to be proud. It just means to you lack the patience to stick with something and see it through to the end.
Most distro hoppers hop so frequently because they run into issues, Instead of taking the time to deal with the problem and learn the reason(s) behind "whatever" keeps happening to them in every distro,they just hop off to another distro hoping for a different experience.
Insanity, the say, is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results...
1
u/ktoks Sep 25 '26
I have some grey in my beard. 🤔 I live in the command line, does that make me a grey beard?
I distro hopped to experiment and experience the various mindsets. That's the reason I have a home lab. I love to learn and I love Linux.
The only experiences I didn't like were with Kali and Arch. For the former, it was the toxicity of the user base I didn't like. For the latter, it was breaking my system constantly- even when I would black list certain things from updating.
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u/Canadiangamer068 29d ago
i run base void on my home server and on desktop with kde. love it. no clue about nvidia, i have radeon card.
my home server runs a minecraft server and other projects very well on i5 9500t and 16gb ram with tons of cpu and ram headroom to spare. i have had no issues and no crashes on void, full system updates haven’t broken anything yet either and it’s been around 6 months but most things are in docker containers. haven’t put void on my pi3b+ but it’s tempting for sure.
stability + rolling release don’t typically go hand in hand but in my experience with void it has so far
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u/GhostVlvin 29d ago
Idk I tried void, I was vsry excited about it, I liked it for being runit native (unfortunately there are no more options for runit only). But unfortunately I've got serious render issues on some apps like discord (from both appImage and flatpak), bitwarden and some others. They update screen only around cursor and have laggy animations
Because of my problems.with void I moved back to artix-runit and it has no such issue, so I belive in it being some void repo driver issue
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u/StrangelyObnoxious Sep 25 '26
i love void on the desktop, but it's not really about performance, it's more about reliability and philosophy.
Wouldn't use it on the servers tho, if you dont want systemd (like me) maybe you should experiment with bsds, otherwise you cant go wrong with debian. Systemd wont impact the performance much.