synth-ruiner another rolling-release distro I forgot about is Void Linux. anyone have any experience with it? looks a little bare-bones but maybe that's a good thing.
Void is very bare-bones. Without a strong background it would be hard to manage Void. I'd say that Void is like Arch, how it was around 2005, not now.
Void offers ready-to-use ISOs with various DEs. But installed systems are just a bit more than a pure terminal. Freshly installed Cinnamon = 3G. Freshly installed Mate = 2G. No preinstalled tools, no software of any kind, no systemd, no running services, no graphical package managers, nothing is pre-configured. It's up to user to build a system from ground up.
You get nude and crude terminal governed by xbps. Like vanilla Arch with pacman only. It's just luxurious.
There's no systemd in Void, so I can't measure exact boot times, but Void roughly boots up twice as fast as Arch. Seems impossible, but the impression persists on each boot.
Void uses runit as init and supervisor subsystem. A user isn't forced to learn Poetteringish to break through the maze of a confusing systemd. Runit is clean, logical, simple to manage. All services, daemons - much less than in systemd - are under a full user's control, at any time.
I run Arch since 2005, so building a system from scratch with CLI is not a problem, but a few times Void has made me to desperate. I hated Void at those moments, but a day later was returning back to it. Reward and satisfaction are enormous when you make Void to run as you wish.
Even when you get a fully working Void system it doesn't grow up too much. Void Cinnamon, started from 3G, grew up to 4G+ here.
Arch is tediously stable. Only Debian Stable is as stable as Arch. I was bored with it, so started to look for new adventures, preferably similar to those in vanilla Arch.
Void seems to be the only competitor for Arch. It's very enjoyable system.
