Did you know that Void has over 20 mirrors? We have mirrors all over the world, but just having a bunch of servers isn’t enough to effectively deliver package updates to all Void users. A mirror that is nearby can have extremely good performance if you know it’s there and switch to it, but for many people what we would like to offer is just a URL that works anywhere in the world to provide the best download experience available in that location. When you look at what we’re trying to achieve, its pretty clear we’d be trying to build a content delivery network (CDN) for Void.
Rather than re-inventing the wheel, we reached out to the team at Fastly to see if they’d be interested in working with us to improve the default package experience for Void users globally. We’re excited to announce that the answer is yes; Void has been accepted to the Fastly Fast Forward program. As part of this project, we’ll be provisioning a new repo URL that will retrieve packages via Fastly’s global CDN.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks for the new mirror to become live, and a post about how Void’s mirror infrastructure works!
The US mirror, repo-us.voidlinux.org, is currently having hardware issues and is no longer syncing with the other mirrors for the time being. Until this is fixed, switching to another mirror is recommended. There are several other mirrors located in the US that are still operational.
We’re pleased to announce that the 20221001 image set has been promoted to current and is now generally available.
You can find the new images on our downloads page and on our many mirrors.
Special thanks for this image set goes out to @CameronNemo for work in fixing some of the issues with networking in the installer and @paper42 for various improvements to the live image contents.
Also in this release, the Raspberry Pi platform images are now condensed into one image per architecture. See here for more details about which image to use for which Raspberry Pi model.
You may verify the authenticity of the images by following the instructions on the downloads page, and using the following signify key information:
untrusted comment: This key is only valid for images with date 20221001. public key
RWQ0DEc5FwYgp8wuGTRe3IWJGagpbeOpPqfSQbPIJie9GP8oBybejTqs
Are you ready for Hacktoberfest 2022? Void Linux is! We’re excited to be participating for our 6th year. Contributions that help to address our out-of-date packages queue are especially welcome. This is a great way to dip your feet into the world of Linux distro package management and what happens behind the scenes to provide a wide selection of packages and make sure your system remains up to date.
Updating packages is very easy. You can select a package from the list of out of date packages and update it using the tools in the void-packages repo. The manual might be of assistance when you are updating packages.
As a general rule, we recommend that newcomers to the Void Linux
project steer clear of “structural” packages unless you have specific
domain knowledge that qualifies you to work on high-risk packages.
When selecting a package to update, prefer packages registered to
orphan@voidlinux.org. These packages are otherwise unmaintained,
and your contribution will have a bigger impact. You can update
packages that have a maintainer assigned, but understand that
conflicting changes between a maintainer and contributor will be
resolved at the discretion of Void staff.
Here are some useful tips when updating packages:
Want to contribute but don’t know how to code? No sweat! We have a documentation project that’s managed in git and can help you learn how to use the tools of the trade without needing to simultaneously learn how to manage our package build system. Docs contributions should be in the style of the manual, so make sure you understand the manual and feel free to open an issue or ask on IRC before starting on a larger contribution to make sure your change can be accepted.
We look forward to working with the amazing world of open source developers this month to improve Void and continue our high standards for quality and reliability. To ensure your PR has the best chance at being accepted, feel free to reach out for help as explained in the manual. Together, we can make this a high-impact Hacktoberfest.
The default mirror has been updated to https://repo-default.voidlinux.org. If you wish to specify a mirror that is nearer to you geographically you can find the full list of currently active mirrors here: https://docs.voidlinux.org/xbps/repositories/mirrors/index.html.
The alpha.us.repo.voidlinux.org mirror has been retired. Users should switch to https://repo-us.voidlinux.org for continued service out of the central US. As part of the switch the US tier one mirror has gained TLS, and is running on a more reliable host.
All contributors with in-flight PRs should rebase to ensure that the latest URL is reflected in your branch’s CI configuration.
Are you ready for Hacktoberfest 2021? Void Linux is! We’re excited to be participating for our 5th year. Contributions that help to address our out-of-date packages queue are especially welcome. This is a great way to dip your feet into the world of Linux distro package management and what happens behind the scenes to provide a wide selection of packages and make sure your system remains up to date.
Updating packages is very easy. You can select a package from the list of out of date packages and update it using the tools in the void-packages repo. The manual might be of assistance when you are updating packages.
As a general rule, we recommend that newcommers to the Void Linux
project steer clear of “structural” packages unless you have specific
domain knowledge that qualifies you to work on high-risk packages.
When selecting a package to update, prefer packages registered to
orphan@voidlinux.org. These packages are otherwise unmaintained,
and your contribution will have a bigger impact. You can update
packages that have a maintainer assigned, but understand that
conflicting changes between a maintainer and contributor will be
resolved at the discretion of Void staff.
Here are some useful tips when updating packages:
We look forward to working with the amazing world of open source developers this month to improve Void and continue our high standards for quality and reliability. To ensure your PR has the best chance at being accepted, feel free to reach out for help as explained in the manual. Together, we can make this a high-impact Hacktoberfest.
Void is pleased to announce that DigitalOcean has renewed their sponsorship of our project as part of the Digital Ocean Open Source program. DigitalOcean provides us with reliable infrastructure on which we run the control plane for our distributed fleet of machines, as well as some assorted monitoring and fleet management services. You can find our full list of sponsors on the Acknowledgements page.
Should you also want to run a Void Linux VM on DigitalOcean’s droplet service, we provide tooling for generating Void Linux images in the mklive repository.
We are aware of an ongoing infrastructure issue affecting repository synchronization and package signing. We are working to resolve this disruption, but first must resolve another unrelated infrastructure issue. We have no short term ETA for service restoration, however our worst case resolution timeline is Friday the 23rd of July.
Your patience is appreciated while we perform this work as fast as possible.
We have been made aware that during the mass channel takeover that is
ongoing on freenode that bogus ##voidlinux and ##xbps channels
have been created in the secondary namespace.
We do not operate or engage with these channels, and we do not
maintain an official presence on the freenode network. We are still
in the process of finalizing the shutdown of the #xbps and
#voidlinux channels in the primary namespace, and have removed our
channels from the public listing as part of this process.
Though you should always exercise caution when running code obtained from the internet, we urge you exercise extreme caution when using any code from any channels on the freenode network that claims affiliation with the Void Linux project. You can always find our official points of presence listed at the top of our home page.
If you want to ask the Void team questions in real-time about this or
any other Void related matter, feel free to ask at any time in
#voidlinux on irc.libera.chat.