• The story
• Why Void Linux and suckless fit together
• Download v27.1
• Install
• The desktop
• Keyboard and mouse
• Software
• Updates and the Abyss package repository (PMR)
• Building the ISO from source
• Repository layout
• Contributing
• Credits and license

For years I hopped from distribution to distribution looking for a daily driver that fit how I work. I write code, run servers, design, and spend most of the day in a terminal. What I wanted turned out to be a short list of hard requirements:

• It has to suck less. I wanted small programs I can read in an afternoon, configure in C, and understand completely. The suckless philosophy of simplicity, clarity and frugality is how I want my tools to behave.
• Rolling release. No big-bang upgrades every six months, and nothing frozen two years behind upstream. I wanted to update when I like and always have current software.
• No systemd. I wanted an init I can understand: a few shell scripts and a supervisor, not a whole platform.
• Minimalist by default. I wanted to start from almost nothing and add only what I need.
• Not a fork. I didn't want a rebrand of Ubuntu or Arch that lags behind its parent and dies when its maintainer gets bored. I wanted something independent, with its own package manager and build system.

Most distributions fail at least one of these. Some are rolling but run systemd. Some are minimal but are forks of forks. Some are systemd-free but fixed-release.

Then I found Void Linux, and it met every one:

• An independent distribution, built from scratch and not derived from any other.
• Rolling release, with packages that track upstream closely.
• runit as init and service supervisor. A service is a directory with a run script, and boot takes seconds.
• XBPS, a fast, simple binary package manager, plus xbps-src, a clean source-build system that anyone can use to package and patch software.
• A minimal base that installs only what you ask for.

On top of that base I built my daily desktop from the suckless tools: dwm, st, dmenu, slock and tabbed. Over time the patches, the configuration, the scripts and the small fixes added up to a complete, polished system that I install everywhere: on my Mac through Apple Virtualization, on x86_64 machines, and in VMs.

Abyss Linux is that system, packaged so anyone can use it. It's a ready-to-boot ISO for people who like minimalist, efficient computing and want a beautiful, fast, understandable desktop without spending weeks building it themselves. It stays 100% Void underneath: the official Void repositories, Void's kernel and Void's tools. Abyss only adds a desktop layer and a small signed repository for its suckless builds.

Void already packages the suckless tools. Its xbps-src system makes it easy to rebuild them with patches applied and publish them as normal binary packages. That is exactly what the Abyss Linux PMR does.

SHA256SUMS · what's new in 27.1 · older releases

Verify a download:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS            # Linux
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS        # macOS

Requirements: 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended), 16 GB disk, UEFI firmware (aarch64) or UEFI/BIOS (x86_64). In a VM, give it a virtio GPU, virtio disk and virtio network if you can.

Live session: boots through the Abyss splash straight into the desktop as user anon (password voidlinux; root password voidlinux). The hostname is abyss-live and the ISO label is ABYSS_LIVE.

1. Boot the ISO. The boot is silent (no GRUB menu; hold Esc or Shift to see it) and lands on the desktop.
2. Click Menu (top-right) → Install Abyss Linux. The installer opens in its own large terminal window with a dark, high-contrast theme.
3. Set Hostname, RootPassword and UserAccount, then choose Partition → auto. This creates:
   • a GPT table,
   • a 1 GB FAT32 EFI system partition on /boot/efi,
   • the rest as an ext4 root /,
   • the bootloader target, set automatically.
4. Choose Install. The live system is copied to disk (the Local source, so no network is needed), GRUB is installed (with a removable EFI/BOOT fallback so it boots in VMs that forget NVRAM entries), and services are enabled.
5. Reboot, remove the ISO, log in on tty1, and the desktop starts automatically.

The installer is Void's void-installer with Abyss changes: one-step automatic UEFI partitioning, a dark theme (/etc/dialogrc), Abyss branding, a clean tty1 login on the installed system (the live autologin user is removed), and the correct package clean-up order.

• dwm, patched with systray, status2d, vanitygaps, scratchpad, attachaside and autostart, and themed in Abyss purple #a855f7 on #0d0b18.
• A minimal status bar (dwm-statusbar): CPU, RAM and the clock, plus offline when there is no network, and a purple Menu button.
• The Abyss menu (abyss-control-center, xmenu). Click Menu, or press Super+Esc. Everything is one tree: Apps, Files, Browser, System settings (network, audio, displays, keyboard, wallpaper), Tools (monitor, update, lf, vim, SSH manager, shortcuts) and Power (lock, suspend, hibernate, exit, reboot, shut down). A flat, searchable dmenu version is the fallback.
• HiDPI out of the box. ~/.xinitrc sets Xft.dpi to 192 (2×) in Apple Virtualization guests and on screens at least 1700 px tall, and to 144 (1.5×) from 1300 px. dwm, st, dmenu, xmenu, rofi and dunst all scale with it. To pin a value: echo 144 > ~/.config/abyss/dpi.
• Keyboard: us + ara layouts (Alt+Shift switches), Caps Lock is Escape, and Super+Alt+k swaps Super onto Left Alt for VMs that capture the Command key.
• Notifications: dunst, dark with a purple frame, placed under the bar.
• Dark GTK apps: Thunar and other GTK 3 apps use the Abyss theme: a dark Adwaita with purple selection, and Papirus-Dark icons with violet folders. Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos each get their own folder icon.

Menu	Launcher (rofi)	Files (lf)

Super is the mod key. Press Super+F1 at any time for the cheatsheet.

The patched source trees are in this repository (dwm/, st/, dmenu/, slock/, tabbed/, wmname/). The PMR holds the same changes as patch files against the official release tarballs.

Need more? sudo xbps-install firefox chromium gimp …. All of Void's ~14,000 packages are available.

The full list with file modes is in docs/abyss-overlay.md.

Abyss is a rolling release. One command updates everything: the Void base, the applications, and the Abyss suckless builds.

sudo xbps-install -Su

The suckless tools come from the Abyss Linux PMR. It's a signed XBPS repository, built from public xbps-src templates by GitHub Actions and hosted on GitHub Pages:

repository = https://mrzakaria.github.io/AbyssLinuxPMR/current      (/etc/xbps.d/20-abyss-pmr.conf)
signing key = c6:f0:d1:05:cb:f1:89:83:58:c2:e2:e4:4c:c9:09:9a        (RSA 4096, "Abyss Linux")

When suckless releases a new dwm or st, or someone improves a patch, a pull request to the PMR updates the template. CI rebuilds and signs it, and every Abyss system receives it with the next xbps-install -Su. You don't need a new ISO.

xbps-query -Rs abyss-                 # what the PMR offers
xbps-query -p repository abyss-dwm    # where an installed package came from

The build uses Void's void-mklive (vendored in void-mklive/ with the Abyss installer changes) and runs on:

• macOS (Apple Silicon): build-distro.sh boots a small Void Linux VM with QEMU + HVF and builds inside it. Requires qemu, e2fsprogs and python3 from Homebrew, and about 15 GB of free disk.
• Void Linux: runs mklive.sh directly (as root).

git clone https://github.com/MrZaKaRiA/AbyssLinux && cd AbyssLinux
FORCE_REBUILD=1 ./build-distro.sh                 # aarch64 + x86_64
FORCE_REBUILD=1 BUILD_X86_64=0 ./build-distro.sh  # aarch64 only
FAST_ISO=0 FORCE_REBUILD=1 ./build-distro.sh      # full package set (browsers, dev tools, containers, art apps)

Output: void-suckless-dev-aarch64.iso and void-suckless-dev-x86_64.iso. The release renames them to abyss-linux-<version>-<arch>.iso.

What the build does:

1. builder/setup-builder.sh (macOS only) downloads a Void aarch64 rootfs and kernel to /tmp/void-builder.
2. builder/abyss-mklive-tweaks.sh patches a copy of void-mklive: hidden 2 s GRUB menu, ISO label ABYSS_LIVE, hostname abyss-live, and the Abyss PMR key in keys/.
3. mklive.sh installs the package list from the Void repos and the Abyss PMR (-r), copies custom-overlay/ over the rootfs, enables services, and runs builder/abyss-postsetup.sh. That hook sets root ownership and modes, writes the version into the installer and /etc/os-release, and reports missing tools.
4. dracut builds the live initramfs, and xorriso makes a hybrid ISO with the Abyss GRUB splash. The kernel command line is quiet loglevel=3 rd.udev.log_level=3 udev.log_level=3.

Rebuild a suckless binary for local testing by editing dwm/config.def.h (for example) and building it like any suckless program (make). Ship the change through the PMR (see CONTRIBUTING.md).

AbyssLinux/
├── README.md, CHANGELOG.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, LICENSE, VERSION
├── build-distro.sh            # entry point (macOS → QEMU builder VM, Linux → mklive)
├── builder/
│   ├── builder.sh             # runs inside the builder VM (packages, services, mklive calls)
│   ├── setup-builder.sh       # fetches the builder VM rootfs + kernel (macOS)
│   ├── abyss-mklive-tweaks.sh # boot/branding tweaks + PMR key on a void-mklive copy
│   └── abyss-postsetup.sh     # mklive -x hook: ownership, modes, version
├── keys/abyss-pmr.plist       # public key of the Abyss PMR (fingerprint in keys/FINGERPRINT)
├── custom-overlay/            # files copied onto the ISO root filesystem
│   ├── etc/ (skel, sv, xbps.d, X11, dialogrc, doas.conf, rc.conf, os-release, …)
│   └── usr/ (bin/void-installer, local/bin/abyss-*, share/backgrounds/abyss, …)
├── dwm/ st/ dmenu/ slock/ tabbed/ wmname/   # patched suckless sources (as shipped)
├── void-mklive/               # Void's live-image builder + Abyss installer changes
└── docs/ (abyss-overlay.md, screenshots/)

Bug reports, fixes, new patches and ideas are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

• Desktop, scripts, installer and build → this repository.
• Suckless builds and new Abyss packages → AbyssLinuxPMR.

• Void Linux and its contributors: the base system, XBPS, xbps-src and void-mklive (BSD-2-Clause, see void-mklive/COPYING).
• suckless.org: dwm, st, dmenu, slock, tabbed and wmname (MIT/X, see each LICENSE), and the authors of every patch listed above.
• Everything else in this repository (scripts, overlay, build hooks, documentation) is MIT licensed. See LICENSE.

Abyss Linux is a community project and is not affiliated with Void Linux or suckless.org.