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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the interesting,-but... dept.

Jesse Smith reports via DistroWatch

Conclusions

On the whole, the Devuan project appears to have achieved its goals. The distribution offers users an operating system virtually identical to Debian 8, but with systemd replaced with SysV init. The project provides existing Debian users a clean and easy migration path to Devuan that has only a minimal amount of side effects. Taken on its own, Devuan is a lightweight operating system with a fairly minimal (and responsive) desktop environment.

While Devuan has reached its goals, I had two significant concerns about the distribution. The first concern was the system installer. While it worked, I'm curious as to why Devuan appears to have discarded the reliable Debian installer in favour of a less feature rich and less polished installation process. Other Debian-friendly installers, such as the one which ships with Linux Mint Debian Edition, are available if a more streamlined approach is wanted.

My other concern is that Devuan 1.0.0 is about two years behind Debian. A fork of Debian without systemd seemed promising and interesting in 2015 when Debian 8 was released. But now, two years later, with Debian 9 on the horizon, Devuan 1 feels outdated. The software, such as the office suite and kernel, are about three years old at this point and unlikely to appeal to any except the most conservative users. The distribution may hold more appeal on servers where change often happens more slowly, but even there some of the Devuan packages are starting to show their age.

At this point I suspect Devuan 1 will only appeal to the more enthusiastic members of the anti-systemd crowd. If Devuan 2 can be launched shortly after Debian 9 comes out later this year then I could see the project gaining a stronger user base, but at the moment Devuan feels like an interesting idea that took too long to get off the ground.

Previous: Devuan Stable Release -- at Last!

[Editors Note: Debian 9 has been released. We ran a story on it a few hours ago.]


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:41PM (10 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:41PM (#527155) Journal

    (a Manjaro arch system WITHOUT SYSTEMD would be EEEEXCELLLLANT!)

    You do have a choice of init systems with Manjaro. systemd, sysvinit openrc.

    Personally I can't be bothered to get worked up about systemd. It works, and it works well, and the documentation and ease of use is better than what it replaced.

    You should try the Manjaro LXDE Community Edition. Its way lighter than the XFCE edition, which just about as memory intensive as the KDE.

    Devuan would have done well to package LXDE. That would give them a legitimate reason to exist as a great lightweight distro,

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:55PM (7 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:55PM (#527184) Journal

    I do use xfce normally: when I want real speed, I log into i3wm... If my memory was better for remembering commands and man page -r -R -c, etc, I'd probably live in i3.

    i3 plus guake is nice.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday June 18 2017, @07:49AM (6 children)

      by tonyPick (1237) on Sunday June 18 2017, @07:49AM (#527395) Homepage Journal

      Random question what does guake give you in i3? The persistence is nice, but it's not a big win over just mod-enter and shifting around desktops for me... Is there some killer thing I'm missing?

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:05AM (5 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:05AM (#527413) Journal

        Just that you have a terminal always open, but it's not taking up any real estate on your screen: I found I was always shrinking down the terminals if I wanted to watch a movie. With guake, it's just F12, type your command with & to background it and free up the terminal for the next command, then F12 to hide guake again.

        When I'm not watching a movie and need a screen open for lots of typing, then mod enter.

        It just keeps from having to move and resize terminals out of the way.

        Haven't checked yet to see how much resources guake uses (this is from my stupid tablet) but it doesn't seem to be much with arch's KISS attitude.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 2) by fnj on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:36PM (3 children)

          by fnj (1654) on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:36PM (#527554)

          I don't get it. I am mystified. What is stopping you from going full screen in your movie player? -Bang- that "frees the screen real estate" but leaves the terminal with its context uninterrupted. Then when you want your terminal again, toggle off full screen and -bang- all your windows are restored including konsole or any other terminals. That's how I use linux. Others use virtual desktop switching, which accomplishes the same end in a different way. I am bewildered as to why anyone dreamed up guake's bizarre special-case behavior. It's utterly pointless.

          This presumes you are using a sane window manager.

          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday June 19 2017, @02:43AM (2 children)

            by Gaaark (41) on Monday June 19 2017, @02:43AM (#527695) Journal

            I used the movie as an example: do you really want to be constantly moving programs around to different desktops and resizing them, etc, when all you have to do is hit F12, type what you want, then hit F12 again?

            Your way:
            Open a terminal and close it:
            1. mod+enter
            2. exit+enter.
            This is 7 different keys you have to hit just to open and close a terminal

            My way:
            Open a terminal and close it:
            1. F12
            2. F12

            Too much work when hitting the same button twice is easy.

            Why the hostility? You do it your way, i'll do it mine! See: simple.

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
            • (Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:08AM (1 child)

              by fnj (1654) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:08AM (#528358)

              Are you purposely feigning ignorance? There is no such crap necessary.

              Terminal is running.
              $ run-program &
              Go full screen or maximize if desired.
              When done with program, exit it. -Bang- terminal is back with context unchanged.
              Or if you don't want to terminate it, just click back on the terminal.
              If you minimized it, all you have to do is click on the taskbar to get it back with context unchanged.

              • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:39AM

                by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:39AM (#528412) Journal

                Have you used i3?

                Taskbar??

                --
                --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Monday June 19 2017, @05:49AM

          by tonyPick (1237) on Monday June 19 2017, @05:49AM (#527751) Homepage Journal

          Interesting - personally I'd rather shift terminals around between the desktops to separate them, or maybe move into tab-fullscreen and back on a single desktop with $mod-w/$mod-e when I want the really estate, but I'm on a multi-screen setup where that kind of thing really shines on i3 and remote-X a fair bit, plus I find getting to the function keys a bit more intrusive that holding down the modifier key.

          Also in trying out guake the muscle memory in my fingers has attempted to go for "quake" at least as twice as often as a terminal program :)

          But hey, whatever works for you - thanks for the reply...

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:02PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:02PM (#527189) Journal

    Plus, there are known issues with replacement, which I don't have time to deal with, especially if with every update/upgrade.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:08PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:08PM (#527194) Homepage Journal

    lxde is available in Devuan. Its package is called lxde.

    -- hendrik