On Sun, 9 Aug 2015 10:13:45 +0800
Robert Storey <robert.storey@???> wrote:


> My next review will probably be about Void Linux.

Excellent choice!

> Jesse wrote a very
> brief review of Void a few months ago, in which he basically said it
> didn't run on his machine, so he dismissed it as "not ready."

You mean http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150406#void ?


> That
> was actually a piss-poor review.

In a way it was kind of accurate. He correctly identified the
documentation problem. Lots of distros have inadequate documentation,
but Void goes the extra mile by having misleading, outdated, and just
plain wrong documentation scattered all over the web as well as on its
own website. It took me an hour of research, with suitable
misdirections, to find out the name of the executable you run in order
to install to the hard disk. That's just inexcusable.

Jesse taught me a lesson I sort of knew, but his review really drilled
it in: Install on a Qemu VM first. On the Qemu VM, you can take
snapshots, you can boot three times quicker, it's much easier to "boot
a CD to bust back in", and you have a very well defined piece of
hardware. Now that I've installed and explored it on a Qemu VM,
installing it on metal won't have nearly the frustration potential as
having my initial installation on metal.

My impression of Void is that once you know it, it's outstanding and
can be used for a daily driver desktop. Or server. But its slapstick,
rake-and-banana-peel documentation make it just what Jesse said it was,
at least for the average user: Not ready.

SteveT

Steve Litt
July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21