[4][5] Void Linux was created in 2008 by Juan Romero Pardines, a former developer of NetBSD,[6] to have a test-bed for the XBPS package manager.

The ability to natively build packages from source using xbps-src is likely inspired by pkgsrc and other BSD ports collections.

[12] It is also unique among distributions in that separate software repositories and installation media using either glibc or musl are available.

Among the reasons were the problematic process of patching software that was primarily written to work with OpenSSL, the support for some optimizations and earlier access to newer algorithms.

[13] A switch to OpenSSL began in April 2020 in the GitHub issue of the void-packages repository where most of the discussion has taken place.

As of April 2017, Void Linux supports Flatpak, which allows the installation of the latest packages from upstream repositories.