# Void Linux likely dead



## Oko (May 9, 2018)

One of the most interesting Linux distributions which doesn't utilize systemd appears to be dead

https://voidlinux.eu/news/2018/05/serious-issues.html


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## Crivens (May 9, 2018)

Isn't "leadership offline" part of *any meaningful* emergency planning? Or the "what if core infrastructure breaks down"   scenario?


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## Cthulhux (May 9, 2018)

It's not dead - they only lost control over some of their infrastructure. In theory, they could just fork it. 

After having used it for a while (not anymore though), I would find it sad to see it disappear.


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

Like freebsd?


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## drhowarddrfine (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- Trolling will get you nowhere.


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## SirDice (May 9, 2018)

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.


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## Oko (May 9, 2018)

SirDice said:


> The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.


Exaggerated or not I am coming to the funeral.


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## Oko (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> Like freebsd?


Are you going to Summer camp this year or we will have to babysit you again?


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

Wow how much hostility just for telling the truth, not even the forum is worth it.


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## shkhln (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> Wow how much hostility just for telling the truth



What? There is no single person controlling FreeBSD development.


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## SirDice (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> Wow how much hostility just for telling the truth, not even the forum is worth it.


You walked into a full church on a Sunday afternoon and proclaimed God doesn't exist[*]. What kind of a response did you expect? A standing ovation? 

[*] Odd metaphor perhaps but some of use are quite religious when it comes to their favorite OS.


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

FreeBSD is dead, to the point that recently ghostbsd is migrating to TrueOS as a base system, FreeBSD is not as "community" as it seems at first glance, the "core team" is more concerned with nonsense like the disgusting code of conduct that improve the operating system, without talking about what happened  with John Marino.


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## SirDice (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> FreeBSD is dead, to the point that recently ghostbsd is migrating to TrueOS as a base system,


You do realize TrueOS is based on FreeBSD -CURRENT, right?

"If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging"


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

Right, but there are too many "holes" in freebsd.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 9, 2018)

Almost 40% of all internet traffic goes through Netflix FreeBSD servers. Much of the rest at some point goes through Juniper Networks equipment running FreeBSD. None of this takes into account everything else that runs FreeBSD. Trolls don't know that. Why are you here trollling -Snake- ?


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

It is what has to use a license that basically says "violate my code as you want as long as you say that that is my code" that everyone will violate it, like nintendo, playstation etc...


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## shkhln (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> the "core team" is more concerned with nonsense like the disgusting code of conduct



The new CoC is hugely disappointing but it's unlikely to have any (neither positive, nor negative) impact on the project. If core team decides to take the next logical step in their pursuit of inclusiveness and adopts javascript for driver development, then it's truly gone off the rails. This hasn't happened (yet).



-Snake- said:


> It is what has to use a license that basically says "violate my code as you want as long as you say that that is my code" that everyone will violate it, like nintendo, playstation etc...



Do I see GPL-trolling there?


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

With dead I mean at the community level, FreeBSD is not as communitarian as it seems and the authoritarian expulsion of John Marino proves it.


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## zirias@ (May 9, 2018)

Yep, ridiculous trolling. I did some "porting" myself, submitted three of them, two were accepted and integrated very quickly, no commit rights needed for this. The one that wasn't accepted had bugs, I lacked experience back then. Now try for example to get your own Debian package in the official repos.


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## Crivens (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> It is what has to use a license that basically says "violate my code as you want as long as you say that that is my code" that everyone will violate it, like nintendo, playstation etc...


Every contributor is free to contribute or not. 

This is what the licence requests you do when you use the code. So no one you mentioned violates that licence. If you don't like it that way, you need not contribute. 

If it had not been that way, we would most likely not use tcp/ip for the internet. Boy, that would be a win for open source, wouldn't it?


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## Sensucht94 (May 9, 2018)

Void Linux developer team has already taken control over voidlinux.eu server and over the Freenode's #voidlinux IRC channel, so given the devotion, the professionality and seriousness of some devs I'm quite confident the project is not going to die any time soon,  rather it will continue improving..A lot of new users and contributors are joining the github community; packaging for xbps (at least on glibc) is very easy and a clear manual (comparable to a simply Porter's Handbook) is available on github .

What amazes me is rather Juan Romero (creator of Void Linux and xbps package manager, former NetBSD developer, even author of some major kernel commits) : I mean he's undoubtedly a great developer (just look at xbps/xbps-src, and at his commits to NetBSD,or contributions on source-changes mailing list until 2008). However, he first  slowly disappeared from NetBSD (unofficially AFAIK), without a clear line on what he was still maintaining and what not (until 7.1.2, some files in /etc on NetBSD's base system still pointed to xtreame, Romero's nickname).

Then, within the last year and a half, he slowly disappeared from Void Linux'  forums, github repo, and IRC channel (as well as  any social media). He was maintainer of many packages in xbps repo, which were either left outdated,or adopted by other packagers,or dropped
I had noticed that  long ago,but assumed he was simply going to retire leaving everything in the hands of the other core developers (around 10 people). Istead,he just went missing.

So, assuming it wasn't a sudden, unpredictable,unfortunate event to cause this, this has to be seen as the result of a long process, worsened in a long period, during which Romero had all the time to transfer servers', IRC's ownership, nominate new maintainers, and above all, transfer the beneficiary of donations from himself (physical person) to a Void Linux legal entity, which factually doesn't even exist (donors may now ask where their money has been invested in in the last year, given all developers are volunteers, and no sponsorship campaign was carried out).

Onthe other hand, I really just hope nothing bad happened to him


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## -Snake- (May 9, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Every contributor is free to contribute or not.
> 
> This is what the licence requests you do when you use the code. So no one you mentioned violates that licence. If you don't like it that way, you need not contribute.
> 
> If it had not been that way, we would most likely not use tcp/ip for the internet. Boy, that would be a win for open source, wouldn't it?



Yes, that's true, in fact for some scenarios a permissive license like bsd/mit may be more accurate, I'm not a fan of gpl or a specific license.
Thank you for responding politely.


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## rigoletto@ (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> Right, but there are too many "holes" in freebsd.



So ... what are you doing in here instead of using your favorite proprietary OS, or Arch Linux with Docker?


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## SirDice (May 9, 2018)

Oko said:


> One of the most interesting Linux distributions which doesn't utilize systemd appears to be dead


Besides not using systemd what was it that made it interesting?


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## Sensucht94 (May 9, 2018)

SirDice said:


> Besides not using systemd what was it that made it interesting?



Some other cool stuff in Void:

- LibreSSL

- xbps packaging system, with set of utils which resembles pkg_install from pkgsrc, and xbps-src, to compile from source, which again, takes after a lot pkgsrc phylosophy Both tools are BSDv2-licensed

- The init is actually sysutils/runit, extrenely fast,lightweight and easy to use (services are basic sh scripts). I also used it on FreeBSD for service jails. Besides that,  a stable port for another great init,  skernet's s6 is available in repo and offering larger supervision  capabilities and service dependencies' control.

- all architectures offer a glibc-free, musl-based port (here comes Oko's love I guess). musl is indeed much more lightweight and better performing on embedded, but its main advantage is security

- uses a vanilla,unpatched kernel, with a minimal default config

- eudev as device state event deamon

- dracut as default initramfs creator

- packages often are not by default compiled against pulseaudio or other heavy stuff (pulseaudio is rather offered as a build option for source-compiling), configure/make flags for packages are wisely choiced so as to present the user with sonething different fron the classical Arch Linux bloated software

- all software supporting sndio is compiled against sndio by default

- great support for ARM and especially i686 (which many distros are dropping)

- uses OpenBSD's mandoc instead of man.db for its manpages database

- includes a working NetBSD's rumpkernels port in repo

- dash is the default system interpreter

- OpenDoas (Linux doas port) in repo. one of Void core maintainer is also the current OpenDoas maintainer


Generally speaking, basically niche embedded-oriented a distro which  tries to emulate  OpenBSD  (I put the stress ont he word 'try').

Personally I installed it on my Rpi3 for a mini-server


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## rigoletto@ (May 9, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> - dracut as default initramfs creator



I never got why people do insist in using initramfs, that is not needed at all (just got the things more complicated) unless for some very specific software like plymouth.


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## Sensucht94 (May 9, 2018)

lebarondemerde said:


> I never got why people do insist in using initramfs, that is not needed at all (just got the things more complicated) unless for some very specific software like plymouth.



Useful on a rolling-release, almost bleeding-edge distro: if anything goes wrong (like 4.16 kernel line rewuiring crc32c for ext4fs), you can just sort it out by including/blacklisting this or that module in initramfs.

PS: on Slackware I didn't use a inutrd either! =P


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## adunr (May 9, 2018)

SirDice said:


> Besides not using systemd what was it that made it interesting?



Some of the stuff that I particularly like about Void Linux is:

xbps, the package manager. Package managers in Linux land are... well, they're not very sane, for some reason. xbps is a very welcome exception.
Mostly vanilla package set. Few (if at all) distro-specific patches, everything is as close to upstream as possible.
I didn't use it, but it has an actively-maintained musl-based version, too.
Independent, community-driven. You're not enrolled to do beta testing for any Enterprise distribution . And the community is friendly and knowledgeable.
It's somewhat like a combination of Slackware and OpenBSD I guess. It's quite refreshing.

In all honesty, though, not having systemd is a pretty compelling reason to look at it. I'm not in the systemd-hating crowd but I prefer to avoid it for home use. After eight hours of doing Linux stuff  at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and see what broke _this_ time.


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## Crivens (May 9, 2018)

Since this thread is about a non-FreeBSD OS (I know, off-topic and such), would you gentlepersons please take one or two swings at the subject and then we send this thread on it's way?


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## ronaldlees (May 9, 2018)

-Snake- said:


> It is what has to use a license that basically says "violate my code as you want as long as you say that that is my code" that everyone will violate it, like nintendo, playstation etc....



I have no problem with FreeBSD's generosity.  



Sensucht94 said:


> Some other cool stuff in Void:
> ...
> Great support for ARM and especially i686 (which many distros are dropping)
> ...
> ...



Thanks - I may have to try it (I can deal with different types of licenses - no problem at all).


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## drhowarddrfine (May 9, 2018)

LibreSSL is slow compared to openSSL.


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## Oko (May 9, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> LibreSSL is slow compared to openSSL.


I would take slow over buggy, incorrect, full of security holes, and mostly undocumented (or inadequately documented) any day or night. I know FreeBSD is never going to use LibreSSL, vanilla OpenSSH, or God forbid updated version of PF due to the bad blood between the camps and I am at peace with it. However, I would never put FreeBSD machine as a perimeter firewall or such. My FreeBSD file servers in terms of security are treated just like Red Hat Linux (I don't have Windows machines).  Means they need protection of OpenBSD servers to survive the Internet.

I am familiar with the love story between FreeBSD and BearSSL and I am not buying it for a second.


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## zirias@ (May 10, 2018)

Oko said:


> However, I would never put FreeBSD machine as a perimeter firewall or such.


Are there any flaws with using a minimal FreeBSD + pf for such a gateway machine? I'm just about to create a firewall for my home (as a bhyve vm with two NICs assigned by PCI passthru, I planned to use them as a lagg(4) device with vlans on top) and if FreeBSD isn't suitable for that purpose, I could of course have this vm run OpenBSD ... anything I should read about that topic?


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## Oko (May 10, 2018)

Zirias said:


> Are there any flaws with using a minimal FreeBSD + pf for such a gateway machine? I'm just about to create a firewall for my home (as a bhyve vm with two NICs assigned by PCI passthru, I planned to use them as a lagg(4) device with vlans on top) and if FreeBSD isn't suitable for that purpose, I could of course have this vm run OpenBSD ... anything I should read about that topic?


Depends on your risk averse level. Don't get me wrong there are people running ISP businesses of FreeBSD. Your lost me when you start taking about virtual machines and perimeter firewall. Virtual machines including OpenBSD's vmm and security are mutually exclusive concepts.


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## zirias@ (May 10, 2018)

Oko said:


> Virtual machines including OpenBSD's vmm and security are mutually exclusive concepts.


Bad news for all these cloud service providers then  Well, alright, that's a whole different level you're talking about if the possibility to break out of a VM is to be considered. Definitely makes sense for an enterprise network -- not so much for me at home  So I guess I'll just stick to FreeBSD for simplicity.


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## Crivens (May 10, 2018)

The more I think about it, the more I would like a small howto about pf.


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## scottro (May 10, 2018)

I have an ancient one that some folks at work found useful.  http://srobb.net/pf.html 

However, it's not been updated in years,but has links to useful sites.  
There is a handbook article, as I'm sure you know, which includes contributions by Mr. Hansteen, who, at least for me, writes the best and most understandable stuff on PF.   

I'm too lazy to go through the thread to see how something about Void Linux's creator being unreachable got into  a disussion about pf, but I would guess it had something to do with someone saying Linux/BSD is more secure. 

We sure like to argue on these forums.   (I'm as bad as anyone else).


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## ronaldlees (May 10, 2018)

Never a good thing when people go off of the radar screen w/o explanation.  I went to the Void forum, and a member there indicated that Void's creator had not used any of the social media haunts he was known for using, for about the same length of time as the Void AWOL - going on five months.  Hopefully, the guy is OK.  This has been happening with some projects lately, where only one person holds the keys.  On a forum, they've even talked about hiring a PI to find the guy, so that they can sort out any legal IP situations.

Void looks interesting (if you're into Linux anyway). Read about their pkg system equivalent that runs in containers, w/o root.  Musl is interesting too - I've touched it a little on Alpine.


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## zirias@ (May 10, 2018)

There's also a forum over there with a thread on the subject, of course containing a lot of chatty messages.
Well, thanks for bringing this dist to my attention, might be what I'll try next in bhyve if I don't succeed with my current driver trouble -- this problem looks severe but solvable and they are obviously dedicated to continue the project


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## Sensucht94 (May 10, 2018)

Crivens said:


> The more I think about it, the more I would like a small howto about pf.



Seriously speaking, what the advantage of PF over IPFW?
I mean,I've always found IPFW so damn good,featured,understandable and easy to use that  never felt the necessity to explore something else, outside DragonflyBSD's IPFW3 (which I sugesst you to check out if you haven't already  )

After having faced the nightmare of learning iptables because of the Void  Linux Rpi3 server, I just came to the conclusion that IPFW/IPFW3 was the best I could get for both desktop and home server.
So my question (driven from curiosity and sincere interest) is: where does PF fare better than IPFW , in terms of security, performance, features, versatility, documentation, sintax,maintainance, integration wirh other base system utils like natd, or 3rd party siftware like squid, etc..?


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## Oko (May 10, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> Seriously speaking, what the advantage of PF over IPFW?
> I mean,I've always found IPFW so damn good,featured,understandable and easy to use that  never felt the necessity to explore something else, outside DragonflyBSD's IPFW3 (which I sugesst you to check out if you haven't already  )
> 
> After having faced the nightmare of learning iptables because of the Void  Linux Rpi3 server, I just came to the conclusion that IPFW/IPFW3 was the best I could get for both desktop and home server.
> So my question (driven from curiosity and sincere interest) is: where does PF fare better than IPFW , in terms of security, performance, features, versatility, documentation, sintax,maintainance, integration wirh other base system utils like natd, or 3rd party siftware like squid, etc..?



@admins This is probably got point to fork the thread as the previous and this message have nothing to do with Void Linux.

TL:TW but in short the answer to your question about advantages of PF over IPFW is yes and no Not quite what you wanted to hear. PF is the native package filter of the OpenBSD while IPFW is the native package filter of FreeBSD. PF on FreeBSD is (from my vintage point) obsolete, unmaintained and for all practical purpose a pseudo fork of real PF. However it is still widely used  on FreeBSD by people like me who prefer it over IPFW due to familiarity and simplicity. Both product are very formidable, however only one of them PF is the package filter of OS X and Solaris 11 (traditionally Solaris package filter was Daren Reed's IPFilter which is still available on FreeBSD and used by Juniper networks).

I will stop here as the question is too broad and too technically demanding to be addressed in comprehensive fashion on the forum.  I encourage you to do some reading about PF and IPFW and little experimenting and make up your mind. If you going to play with PF please use OpenBSD as otherwise you will be comparing an ancient version of PF with current IPFW implementation.


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## rigoletto@ (May 10, 2018)

This seems to be an abandoned project but bring some light about IPFW; however IPFW had received some work and not everything in there is true anymore.

IPFW NG.


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## Sensucht94 (May 10, 2018)

Thanks a lot to both


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