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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 But now, two years later, with Debian 9 on the horizon, Devuan 1 feels outdated.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.]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 18 2017, @01:30PM (4 children)
Spending money on Free software, missing the point entirely.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 18 2017, @01:36PM (3 children)
It seems you who misses the point. Hint: The "Free" in "Free Software" doesn't refer to the price.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 18 2017, @02:23PM (2 children)
Never did, but... paying others to help you maintain that which your organization should be learning to maintain for itself... that's the point I think is being missed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 18 2017, @04:20PM (1 child)
This was for me at home: found linux on the internet from windows, but had trouble getting a connection long enough to download it.
Bought redhat 5.2 ($9.99 Canadian) and was from there able to (once i learned man pages and adding -c to wget) distro hop and a whole new world opened up.
Went from learning how to get the Xf86 config file to the point i could get a gui running, to distro hopping to linux from scratch fun, to mandrake and corel linux and ubuntu........
So much fun and learning (feeding the brain) for $9.99... i'll pay that price again no problem.
Now, my distro hopping is free: if i had a ton of money like Mark Shuttleworth, i'd probably pour it into Arch/Manjaro, make it THE linux to install and port games to and Bob would then be your uncle.
What did Scotty say: if horses had wheels, my grandma would be a cart or something?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 18 2017, @04:45PM
That's cheaper than I normally associate with RedHat - I think I paid more for the Slackware subscription... yeah, this is not paying for software, this is like paying for connectivity bandwidth.
If I had 50 lives to live, all starting in the late 1960s, I'd definitely want to devote a few of them to development of free software, mostly Linux, in the late 1990s. Time to ask the Architect for another reboot.
🌻🌻 [google.com]