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Refracta 8.0: Devuan on a Stick

posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:15AM   
from the more-devuan-than-devuan dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

DistroWatch reports

Geeks determined to resist the systemd juggernaut have several options. For me, the most interesting project is Devuan, a fork of Debian. [...] However, it does have a few flaws

[...] It was my search for a quick and easy way to get Devuan up and running that led me to Refracta, a unique distro that fills a niche that has long been neglected. Refracta's existence predates the systemd wars--it was originally based on Debian 5.0, otherwise known as "Lenny". But when Debian 8.0 "Jessie" went full systemd, Refracta moved to the Devuan camp.

Refracta's chief selling point is this: it's a live image that can be quickly installed, customized, and re-installed again. So basically you can roll your own live CD, configured for your hardware and tweaked to suit your personal tastes. It is currently my favorite distro, and I'd recommend it to any Linux geek who has had a little bit of experience. A total Linux newbie might feel more comfortable with a distro that mimics Windows' point-and-click friendliness, but once you've got the basics down, Refracta is easy to get used to.

It's also worth mentioning that even without being installed, a Refracta live CD or USB stick makes an excellent diagnostic and rescue tool. It contains quite a few command line utilities that aren't in a default Devuan or Debian installation, including gddrescue, testdisk, smartmontools, hdparm, lm-sensors, iftop, and iptraf.

[...] Unlike Devuan which uses PulseAudio, Refracta employs ALSA.

[...] Starting with version 8.0, Refracta has gone whole-hog at banishing systemd, not to mention PulseAudio. [...] One could say that Refracta is actually more Devuan than Devuan.

---

Original Submission

• Quick and Easy Dev1 Quick and Easy Dev1 (Score: 5, Informative) by Geotti on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:41AM

  by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:41AM (#418862) Journal

  It was my search for a quick and easy way to get Devuan up and running [...]

  Even if slightly off-topic, I don't understand the original issue, but just in case someone wants to get to Devuan from Debian on e.g. digitalocean:

  install Debian, replace your sources with the testing or stable repositories [1], install the dev1 keyring and update sources [2] and finally dist-upgrade and remove remains [3]. There's an alternative crossgrade guide here [friendsofdevuan.org] and more installation guides (e.g. for raspi) here [friendsofdevuan.org].

  Oh, and I just saw that they even have an installation image [devuan.org] now.
   

  [1] From dev1fanboy's upgrade doc [devuan.org]

  deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie main
  deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-updates main
  deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-security main

   

  [2]

  apt-get update && apt-get install devuan-keyring -y && apt-get update -y

   

  [3]

  apt-get dist-upgrade
  apt-get autoremove --purge && apt-get autoclean

  Will keep Refracta in mind, if I want a systemd-free livecd, though.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+4
  Insightful=1, Informative=3, Total=4
  Extra 'Informative' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Quick and Easy Dev1 (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @03:46PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @03:46PM (#419027)

  A worthy +5 post - thank you! Gonna try Devuan on my RasPi next time I have the chance!
  -- FatPhil

  Parent