Odyssey Linux — a Void-based distro trying to make no-systemd approachable (with a verifiable supply chain)

@n0bod1 Thanks for sharing! A much more insightful post than if I were to share myself. Bumped into this project about 30 mins ago will be following!

Also see this forum post:

Thank you: really! You have no idea what it means that you came here on purpose.

I’d convinced myself that showing people you built a Linux distro required a sandwich board and setting yourself on fire in the middle of Times Square, preferably while the tourists film it in portrait mode.

So: thank you for the chance.

The pleasure is all mine. I recognized the passion within minutes of visiting odysseylinux.org.

It is great to see someone take an already strong foundation and focus on making it more approachable, still niche, without losing what made it unique. Can feel the community outreach around it as well.

I like the name Odyssey. Void seems a bit of a strange name for a Linux OS.

void
adjective
Containing no matter; empty.

I wish you success for all your hard work.

Well you are not wrong. lol

Halano (Halano)

July 17, 2026, 4:45am 10

Perfect linux distribution @n0bod1 nice work,
I’ve been working on scrin os a void based private linux distro for power users only,
similar to yours (alien like) but tiny & much faster.

you must declare the system requirements for your distribution , as you shows it has v3 kernel , also boot idle ram usage ?,
not to mention you use python for xbps-gui,odyssey-controlcenter, and other core component
I was about to try it but that holds me ,
I like the theme logo & brand name,after all I think it’s very niche project.

Thanks. The site is a work in progress, I’m adding pieces one by one. If you go to the features page I’ve just added a specifications section where a script reads the Void and Odyssey repos directly and shows the numbers in real time. For a rolling distribution I think that’s a small nicety.

On Python: I used mainly KDE and I found it the best fit for system integration, plus the contributor base is much wider. And there’s another point. One of Odyssey’s stated values is GPL first, so the practical alternatives for a graphical layer would have been C or C++. Python + Qt made maintainability by future contributors easier without breaking the license priority.

On speed, I’d have my doubts and a missile with two wheels on top is certainly faster than a Ferrari, no question about it, but I think my distro is a whole vision. It may or may not appeal to you, but it can’t be judged only on whether it uses a hundred megabytes of RAM more or less (which, between us, in the labwc session is under 1 GB).

In Italy we have a saying, “ogni scarrafone è bello a mamma sua”, every cockroach is beautiful to its own mother. But leaving affection aside, I honestly don’t think there are other projects like Odyssey in the no-systemd space. Browser in RAM, AppArmor and firewall active and graphically configurable, an attempt at a serious supply chain even at small scale, a design language of its own. Do I need to keep going? What does your distro offer users?

Sorry, a small aside. When I posted a beta-tester request on the Void forum I was immediately told the forum maintainer had his own distro, and being a guest there I didn’t open my mouth. Here we’re on neutral ground, and since you enter a conversation about my distro by citing yours, I allow myself, politely, to reply

Install it, download it, run it. You can’t judge a distribution only from its specs or from how its programs are written. Sorry, I find that a superficial observation. I take the rest of your points on board.

To everyone else, thank you. I didn’t imagine there was a community this healthy, and I hadn’t heard of you before. From now on I’ll leave a link here and there in the forum, because places like this, unfortunately, the Linux community has very few. Thank you for the care.

And to the friend pavlos pavlos kairis who wanted to donate, don’t worry, the thought counts. Right now I can’t accept PayPal, but I will in the future.

NOBODY

@n0bod1

I am a relative ‘newbie’ to Linux. Certainly not anything like the technically astute folk in this forum. However, your post and the brief look at the forum and site for your Odyssey project both pique and intrigue. I will probably wait for the October launch and install on an older machine to test…of a VM of some sort. @hydn Thanks for inviting and linking Odyssey

Thank you @n0bod1 for your amazing job on creating this refined void-based distro! I really felt the need for this kind of distro in the Void space. I made an experimental installation of Odyssey on a spare hardware to test the distro and the install process and, as long as I perceive, for now it is the most curated Void-based piece of software ever created.

Before trying it as my main OS, I have just some questions about the setup for an encrypted installation and the Niri+Noctalia flavour of the distro.
At this stage (or in a planned future) is it doable an install with an encrypted root and swap partition also usable for hibernation? If yes, what is the partition layout that you suggest?
There is a specific reason for offering the old Noctalia version with QS-shell instead of the independent new one? It seems that this version won’t receive any further update.

Thank you (grazie mille!) for your work and your answers, hoping to become an Argonaut very soon!

Thanks for the kind words, glad the install went well.

Encryption: at the moment the installer does not offer an encrypted root, so there is no supported layout for LUKS root + encrypted swap with hibernation. Full disk encryption at install time is planned, it’s essential for a distro that wants to call itself secure, and a btrfs snapshot system is also in my plans. But I don’t want to ship it half-tested, so it will land when the installer path is solid. If you set it up manually on top of a stock install it can work like any Void system, but it’s outside what I currently support, so I’d rather not hand out a partition layout I haven’t validated in the Odyssey installer myself. You can’t have everything at once.

Noctalia: the specific reason is that Noctalia 5 is in beta, lol. Odyssey wants to be rolling AND stable, and those two things only coexist with discipline. Take a look at our development model: Dev — Odyssey Linux. We have an unstable channel, Shipwreck, which already carries Noctalia 5. Once the stable release is out, it sits in Shipwreck for about two weeks, and if no bugs show up it enters Odyssey. That seems a resonable window to me.

Bigger picture: in November the 2027 Edition arrives, with almost 2000 packages built by us, optimized for performance and above all hardened security. It’s a colossal amount of work, so priorities have to be ordered.

If you run into any problem with Odyssey, contact me from the site, I’ll be happy to help. Thanks again.

— nobody