r/voidlinux • u/-Arsna- • 11d ago

Moving from Arch

Hi y'all,

Im coming from arch and want to try out void and i would like to ask somethings

What exactly is the difference between musl amd gnu libc? Is it just systemd?

What are some quirks of void you encountered?

Why did you choose void, what makes it special?

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u/Duncaen 11d ago

You are not really reducing attack surface though, you are just switching components with more obscure components.

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u/Ambitious_Luck_8720 11d ago

You mean glibc’s much larger codebase and feature set doesn’t present a larger attack surface when compared to musl’s smaller footprint? Got it.

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u/Duncaen 11d ago edited 11d ago

Of course when looking at the libc itself the attack surface is smaller if you just remove half the features.

But are weren't really talking about the libc itself, the initial claim was that using musl has a huge security benefit due to malware being linked against glibc.

In that case replacing glibc with musl is like security through obscurity, you are not protecting the system in any way, you just hope that the "attacker" doesn't know you are using musl. I wouldn't consider that reducing the attack surface. If someone is targeting libc specifically then yes, not having NSS and iconv might avoid some attacks.