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Devuan just released their LTS stable Jessie system:
Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd. The latest 1.0.0 Jessie release (LTS) marks an important milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as a universal base distribution. Since the Exodus declaration in 2014, infrastructure has been put in place to support Devuan's mission to offer users control over their system. Devuan Jessie provides continuity as a safe upgrade path from Debian 7 (Wheezy) and a flawless switch from Debian 8 (Jessie) that ensures the right to Init Freedom and avoids entanglement.
And if getting it has to be a secret, check out http://devuanzuwu3xoqwp.onion
-- hendrik
[See also the Devuan 1.0.0 stable release (LTS) announcement for more information on how to install/upgrade, the support services that are available (bug tracking/reporting, user forums, etc.) --martyb]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Friday May 26 2017, @09:00AM (7 children)
I tried devuan when it was still in an alpha state, and it didn't seem particularly complete.
Regarding systemd, devuan was not completely free of it: it used an emasculated version of systemd, to use the functionality that systemd has subsumed and is not available elsewhere. Some of this functionality was in the process of being reimplemented. For example, udev was supposed to be replaced by vdev [github.com]. However, although vdev is in a state where it can be used by someone who knows what he's doing, it has been abandoned by its author, due to a lack of time, so I wonder if parts of systemd are still present in devuan.
Commonly used software, like gnome and sddm did not work back then, while KDE was still at version 4. (Devuan testing did come with KDE 5, but I didn't manage to get it to work.) I just started installing 1.0, and I see that neither Gnome nor KDE are available as installation options, the only desktops offered by the installer being "Devuan desktop environment" (what's that?), Xfce, MATE, and LXDE.
I suppose that Devuan 1.0 is usable, especially as a server OS, where one doesn't care about desktop environments, but is it a complete, modern distribution or is it a distribution of what software can (still) run without systemd?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday May 26 2017, @09:08AM
GNOME is tightly dependent on systemd. Let it go. GNOME is gone.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Friday May 26 2017, @09:24AM (3 children)
Then do yourself a favor and try it again. You're quite right - the alpha version was quite immature. That shouldn't be a huge surprise for alpha-quality software. Ever since the beta-phase, it's been entirely usable, and right now it's as stable as they come.
From the Devuan RC2 release notes:
See this [dyne.org] for details.
The definition of "complete" could naturally be a matter of debate, but in my opinion it's quite complete. I might be trying out KDE later, because I still prefer it to Xfce (even though they seem to do their best to completely f*** up KDE at every major release and take a long time to bring it back to usability).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Friday May 26 2017, @10:23AM (1 child)
Just finished booting devuan 1.0.
A quick look at the installed packages shows that there is a libsystemd0 package, containing libsystemd.so.0, so to answer my first question, there do seem to be some systemd dependencies left. Process 1 is init, however, so devuan's only got a bit of systemd in it.
Regarding "complete" distributions, I would define them as distributions that support all linux software, either out of the box for major software (which would include all major desktop environments) or via third party repositories.
I had forgotten that bit about glitches with gnome and KDE, which they'd mentioned in the beta release. Unfortunately, having tried all sorts of desktops, I keep returning to KDE, even though, as you say, they keep trying to ruin it. This means that I need it to be as stable as possible, so I wouldn't go with a distribution where it is known that KDE is glitchy. (I dumped Fedora, which I'd been using for years, because of this, as KDE 5 kept crashing left and right there.)
KDE 4 seemed rock solid in devuan alpha, and much much faster than KDE 5 in Fedora on a similar VM, so I'm surprised that they stopped offering it.
Anyway, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on devuan, especially to see if there will be any rpm-based distributions based on their work, as I come from that side of the force.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:17PM
As I understand it, libsystemd0 is a library of stubs that report, using the proper mechanisms, that the requested systemd feature is not available. It therefore provides just as much interface as is necessary for packages that check at run time whether they are going to do things the systemd way or the traditional way.
It's a convenience to upstream developers to make it easy to let their software be used on both systemd and nonsystemd systems.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Friday May 26 2017, @06:49PM
I've been using it on my desktop since Alpha 1, and never had a problem.
Then again, my desktop environment of choice is MATE.
(Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Friday May 26 2017, @03:10PM
This list [without-systemd.org] enumerates many distributions that either do not use or offer to not use systemd. As a Gentoo user I can assure you the entire OS platform is mature and complete as though systemd had never been invented. I have a normal init, and OpenRC with standard initd scripts, and udev, and ALSA without PA (even with the latest Firefox with working sound via ALSA-only as it always had been prior, but how long that remains viable is a different story altogether.) Granted that list of low-level components is not exhaustive, but it should illustrate the point nonetheless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:29PM
I understood that to be a working definition of "alpha".