some notes on my Void Linux installation

i actually documented something for once, so i could reference it myself later. asking for some feedback on this, but it is quite long so i get it if you don’t read it all or care. figured some newbie might stumble upon this in the future and get something out of it.

First of all, make sure you have the Void installation guide open. Most of this is just hand holding you through their instructions. For what it’s worth, I think it’s valuable to have another newb explain how they went about getting things done.

Install latest ISO

Download the base image, which should look something like: void-live-x86_64-20210218.iso
If you’re doing this properly, ensure that the sha256sum.txt and sha256sum.sig files are authentic. The Void docs hold your hand for this step.

Do the Disk Mounting Thingy

I use balena but you can use any other similar tool.

Boot machine and change Boot Device List ranking to USB first

Shut computer off -> press Enter (that’s the key I spam for my ThinkPad, it might be different for your machine) -> move USB HDD up to #1

Plug USB in and Boot up
Select Enter on the first option: Void Linux (no RAM)

Or choose the RAM option if you want _superspeed. It’s not really necessary and I get paranoid when doing things non-default.

Configure the WIFI with wpa_supplicant

Create symbolic links and start the services

sudo ln -s /etc/sv/dhcpcd /var/service

sudo ln -s /etc/sv/wpa_supplicant /var/service

sudo sv up dhcpcd

sudo sv up wpa_supplicant

ip link show

Configure your network now that we know the interface (for me, that’s wlp58s0)
```
wpa_cli -i {wifi interface}
```

Within the wpa_cli interface, set up the network

scan

scan_results

add_network
set_network 0 ssid "MYNETWORK"
set_network 0 psk "secret"

enable_network 0
0K

Test your wifi
```
ping google.com
```
Save your configuration

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp58s0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Enter the Void Installer

Do the thing (going to expand on this later, I actually feel like I should study this step and understand what it is I’m doing before I tell anyone to copy me).
For now, this video helped a ton.

void-installer

Update the package manager

sudo xbps-install -u xbps

Update the uhh rest of the stuff

sudo xbps-install -Su

Restart the services:

xcheckrestart

On error, install the following dependency: xtools
```
sudo xbps-install xtools
```

Reboot to get latest kernel version after update

sudo shutdown -r now

Install packages:

After install, I got started with: xorg, pulseaudio, i3-gaps, dmenu, alacritty, firefox, nnn, sxiv, Zathura, htop, node, rust, and ofc nvim. This will keep me going for a while.

sudo xbps-install -Su xorg pulseaudio i3-gaps dmenu alacritty firefox nnn sxiv zathura htop nodejs rustup

On error, install the following dependencies:

sudo xbps-install base-devel libX11-devel libXft-devel libXinerama-devel freetype-devel fontconfig-devel

Edit .xinitrc (in your home directory) to run i3-gaps on load

exec i3

Update packages, just in case and reboot

Honestly, I just do this out of paranoia and habit. Every time I open a terminal session I just update everything.

sudo xbps-install -Syu

reboot

Some issues I faced dealt with audio, which I found was quite common. Ensure you have pulseaudio installed, and if that doesnt work, apparently alsamixer also works pretty well. Just make sure to change your i3 config (/.config/i3/config) to bind the alsamixer settings and not the default pulseaudio bindings.