I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I’m happy with it so far.
Why did I switch?
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Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it’ll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.
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Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it’s around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.
Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?
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Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.
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Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It’s harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn’t a big issue for me most of the time.)
For now, I’ll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.
My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it’s probably not suitable for most.
Could you also share the differences you perceived between Arch and Void ?
Void feel faster on old hardware due to systemd missing, the real problem is no-AUR imo.
Systemd won’t make anything slower once the system is booted up, it’s barely doing anything.
Benefit. If you never used AUR before and never felt the need to use it.
I don’t need a lot from the AUR, but a few packages I can’t dl without. Tbf those would be in the official repos in other distros like fedora. I’ve got some weird bugs with fedora though. I just use endeavourOS cause it’s so hassle free. One of the best distros period.
I love EndeavorOS. It is basically just Arch plus 20 packages but it makes such a difference.
Other than the obvious things like arch having better docs and lots of packages, void reminds me of arch before systemd. Especially editing rc.conf etc.