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.

1. 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.

2. Do the Disk Mounting Thingy

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

3. 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

4. Plug USB in and Boot up
5. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

8. Update the package manager

sudo xbps-install -u xbps

9. Update the uhh rest of the stuff

sudo xbps-install -Su

10. Restart the services:

xcheckrestart

• On error, install the following dependency: xtools

  sudo xbps-install xtools
  

11. Reboot to get latest kernel version after update

sudo shutdown -r now

12. 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 

13. On error, install the following dependencies:

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

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

exec i3

15. 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.