The project supports three architectures, each with glibc and musl. A basic table is below:
| Target | Min. CPU requirement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ppc64le | powerpc64le (generic) |
-maltivec -mtune=power9, POWER8 or better |
| ppc64le-musl | powerpc64le (generic) |
-maltivec -mtune=power9, POWER8 or better |
| ppc64 | 970 / G5 | -maltivec -mtune=power9, POWER4 or better |
| ppc64-musl | 970 / G5 | -maltivec -mtune=power9, POWER4 or better |
| ppc | powerpc (generic) |
-mno-altivec -mtune=G4 |
| ppc-musl | powerpc (generic) |
-mno-altivec -mtune=G4 |
The typical expected little endian target (ppc64le) is a Raptor Talos 2, Blackbird or similar commonly accessible hardware. At very least, you will need a POWER8, which means ISA 2.07 and little endian AltiVec/VSX. There may be other hardware implementing these, but that is currently untested. Notably the e6500 systems are not supported, as they implement ISA 2.07 but do not support little endian AltiVec/VSX.
For booting the little endian live media, a PowerNV (OpenPOWER) or PowerVM environment is expected, so either Petitboot or SLOF can be used. In the former case, it will directly load the kernel, in the latter case, GRUB will be loaded by the firmware.
The 64-bit big endian requirements are more relaxed and require at least a PowerPC 970 (G5) with AltiVec support. That means any 64-bit PowerPC Mac will be able to boot the system, but not POWER4/POWER5, as they do not support AltiVec (same with e.g. e5500; e6500 should work). POWER6 and newer can boot it, this includes all targets supported by little endian as well.
The 32-bit builds are completely generic and require no specific processor. However, the live media expect an OpenFirmware environment (IBM or Apple style), and the typical platform for those is therefore an Apple PowerPC system of the NewWorld kind (any G4, plus G3 “Blue and White” and newer). Other environments may need manual intervention.
This listing is not exhaustive. There may be other platforms capable of booting the media. If you know of one, or know how to make one work, please let us know.
All 64-bit targets use the ELFv2 ABI for both kernel and userland. This includes big endian glibc. This may have some compatibility implications, so be aware of those (you will not be able to run legacy prebuilt binaries directly and will need to set up a container with another distribution). Void aims to be a legacy-free system and is the first and currently only distribution to use ELFv2 on big endian glibc, as well as the first and only to use it for the big endian kernel.
Repository status
There is a separate statistics page with a detailed matrix of what is built, what is buildable and what is not.
At the time of writing this, at least all major desktops and common applications were available for all targets. Application-specific issues may exist, but not more than on other distributions. Please report any issues you may come across here.
