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 [https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/live-images/guide.html] 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 [https://alpha.de.repo.voidlinux.org/live/current/] - If you’re doing this properly, ensure that the sha256sum.txt and sha256sum.sig files are authentic. The Void docs [https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/live-images/guide.html] hold your hand for this step. 2) Do the Disk Mounting Thingy - I use balena [https://www.balena.io/] 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 bash sudo ln -s /etc/sv/dhcpcd /var/service bash sudo ln -s /etc/sv/wpa_supplicant /var/service bash sudo sv up dhcpcd bash sudo sv up wpa_supplicant bash ip link show - Configure your network now that we know the interface (for me, that’s wlp58s0) bash wpa_cli -i {wifi interface} - Within the wpa_cli interface, set up the network bash 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 bash 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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM5Yl18vw8A] helped a ton. void-installer 8) Update the package manager bash sudo xbps-install -u xbps 9) Update the uhh rest of the stuff bash sudo xbps-install -Su 10) Restart the services: bash xcheckrestart - On error, install the following dependency: xtools bash sudo xbps-install xtools 11) Reboot to get latest kernel version after update bash 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. bash sudo xbps-install -Su xorg pulseaudio i3-gaps dmenu alacritty firefox nnn sxiv zathura htop nodejs rustup 13) On error, install the following dependencies: bash 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. bash sudo xbps-install -Syu bash 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.