Void 20250202 comes with Apple Silicon, Lenovo Thinkpad X13s, and Pinebook Pro support

Void Linux has been around for roughly 17 years, and what sets it apart from many other distros is the fact that it uses the X Binary Package System (XBPS), which has been designed from scratch. This independent Linux distro uses the runit init system, and its base install only consists of free software. However, the official repository also provides access to proprietary software. Yesterday, version 20250202 arrived with quite a few goodies, mostly focused on extending the hardware support provided and fixing some of the issues discovered in the previous releases.

The live ISOs come with the 6.12 kernel, and the images that use Xfce have been updated to version 4.20 of this popular window manager. In addition to Asahi Linux-based Apple Silicon support, Void 20250202 also fully supports the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s and the Pinebook Pro. The Raspberry Pi builds, on the other hand, come with Linux 6.6.69 and should support the CM5 and Raspberry Pi 500 hardware. An option to disable graphics has been added to the bootloader menu, alongside additional hotkeys. Last but not least, it should also be mentioned that Raspberry Pi images are now smaller but will use growpart to adjust the size of the root partition to fit the storage device.

All downloadables can be retrieved from this page. Those who would like to try this distro for the first time should be aware that Xfce is the only graphical flavor available. To use other graphical environments, which are fully supported by Void Linux, they should install those pieces of code after deploying one of the existing images. The official website states that they have taken this action to reduce the testing overhead, which makes total sense for a distro with a tiny team behind it.