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posted by janrinok on Monday June 11 2018, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the systemd-free dept.

It's like Debian Linux, but without systemd.

Release notes are at https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818.

Previously: Devuan ASCII Sprint -- 15-17 Dec. 2017


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Devuan ASCII Sprint -- 15-17 Dec. 2017 22 comments

[Ed's note: ASCII is the name given to the next release of Devuan]

"Dear D1rs,

there will be a Devuan ASCII sprint on 15-16-17th December 2017 (this coming weekend). The aim is to squash a few outstanding bugs in Devuan ASCII, with the view of preparing a beta release.

Some of the tasks require "hands-on" to the repos and other services, but virtually everybody else can help by testing packages, fixes, upgrade paths, patches, installation material, and so on, so anybody with some time to spare over the next week-end is welcome to join.

A list of currently outstanding bugs relevant for ASCII can be found at:

http://bugs.devuan.org//cgi/pkgreport.cgi?which=tag&data=ascii

If you can provide more info on those bugs, or patches, or anything, be prepared to do so.

There is no fixed schedule so far, but the best way to get in touch and "do things" is probably by hanging around on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on #devuan-dev. More detailed information will be provided sooner [closer?] to the date.

Come on, let's put ASCII out.

The Dev1Devs "

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20171211.190051.843303de.en.html


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @02:38PM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @02:38PM (#691407)

    The release notes don't say what changed. Is there a summary of the changes? The editor edited out the question.

    • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday June 11 2018, @02:47PM (10 children)

      by bart9h (767) on Monday June 11 2018, @02:47PM (#691415)

      Devuan 1 was based on Jessie, and this new version is based on the Stretch, so it gets updated version of all packages. I think that's what is relevant for most users.

      I'm giving Gentoo a try now, but I'll probably get back to Devuan on the next reinstall.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Monday June 11 2018, @04:00PM (9 children)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @04:00PM (#691448) Journal

        updated version of all packages.... that's what is relevant for most users.

        It gets updated versions of packages that are both taken from Debian and changed since the previous release. It also gets updated packages that are Devuan-specific and changed since previous release. Packages unchanged since previous release don't get updated versions.

        It might be nice to think that "all" packages are updated, and indeed many are.

        The most relevant and frankly, stunning, change for free software users is that Devuan, beginning with verison 2.0, has abandoned Debian's position of being all free software.

        Debian maintains 'contrib' (free software that depends on nonfree software) and 'non-free' (software that does not meet Debian free software guidelines) repositories as a convenience for its users, but contrib and non-free software are "not at all a part of Debian" and no Debian official media contain any contrib or nonfree software.

        Devuan, on the other hand, now includes packages from non-free right on the install media and silently installs them by default if it can match non-free firmware or support packages to the target install hardware.

        Quoting from the Release Notes [devuan.org]:

        All Devuan 2.0 ASCII install media make non-free firmware packages available at install time...these packages are needed (and will be installed)... if your wifi adapter requires them.

        They mention that if someone prefers not to install non-free software, there is an option buried in the "expert install" to avoid it. But people who prefer non-free software are more likely to not install from a non-free install medium.

        I see what they were thinking with this change ("convenience over free software"), but a project with priorities like that is damn sure not "Debian Without systemd", as the title somewhat falsely indicates. That would require something like "Devuan free software guidelines" and given that non-free software makes the cut, then there aren't any such guidelines that matter.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:45PM (8 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:45PM (#691468)

          Devuan, on the other hand, now includes packages from non-free right on the install media and silently installs them by default if it can match non-free firmware or support packages to the target install hardware.

          I have no problem with this personally. It is really annoying when you try to install Linux to a laptop to find out the wireless adapter drivers. Then you follow a cryptic guide by someone who doesn't care because they hate non-free software and fuck you for wanting your hardware to actually work!

          This level of autism is retarded. I don't give a damn, I want my machine to work, and I shouldn't have to spend hours copying files from a USB stick back and forth hoping it works because someone's autism got triggered. Mint used to do this, but they offered an easy to use tool to install non-free drivers. I'd be okay with this too.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday June 11 2018, @05:22PM (5 children)

            by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @05:22PM (#691491) Journal

            Devuan...now includes packages from non-free... on the [official] install media

            I have no problem with this personally.

            Then you probably aren't the "for free software users" that I mentioned that it was relevant for.

            It is really annoying when you try to install Linux to a laptop to find out the wireless adapter drivers. Then you follow a cryptic guide by someone who doesn't care because they hate non-free software and fuck you for wanting your hardware to actually work!

            That isn't why we don't like you. We don't like you because you behave like a rude, demanding, noncontributing ass, and you are spreading false information and discord which didn't previously exist. Your hardware and software preferences don't enter into it.

            As for the "wireless drivers", if yours are nonfree and you're ok with that, you should probably install from unofficial but quite readily available non-free CD images with firmware [debian.org] that are linked right from the "Installing Debian 9.4" page on Debian's website. (i.e., neither cryptic nor more trouble than any other installation method.)

            Or from Devuan's official images, now that they are all non-free (as are many free-software based operating systems).

            This level of autism is retarded.

            Don't worry. With careful study and practice, I am sure you will be able to find the download link that's right for you. They have it highlighted in yellow [debian.org] to help with that. I know that GNU/Linux isn't drop-dead simple, but installers and installation have gotten better and better with time, and now, installing is much simpler than in the past.

            I don't give a damn [about free software], I want my machine to work, and I shouldn't have to spend hours copying files from a USB stick back and forth hoping it works because someone [else's] autism [also] got triggered.

            As I mentioned, any choice to spend hours copying a wireless driver from a USB stick is probably not the right one for you. The non-free unofficial image is likely to be more helpful in your case. It installs non-free components silently and automatically.

            Mint used to do this, but they offered an easy to use tool to install non-free drivers. I'd be okay with this too.

            Neither would I have any problem with the choice of using a tool to install non-free drivers, in addition to non-free images created for people who have to have non-free drivers--it would be a lot better than just silently installing non-free software! Having a tool==more choice.

            Good luck with your issues, hardware, software, driver, anger, and otherwise.

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:55PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:55PM (#691541)

              And quite frankly if firmware is the only non-free item they include, I would suggest they just provide two install cd images if needed. Personally though, we've lost the 'liberated hardware battle' at least on x86. Signed/Binary firmware is required top to bottom now, including reportable serials that can tie your software, hardware, MAC address, and network address together well enough to be (ab)used against you in a court of law. As much as I would like Devuan to avoid using non-free firmware, that would require a chain of current generation hardware that didn't require non-free firmware. And furthermore: The linux kernel had been including non-free firmware directly in the kernel source for years before the non-free firmware package was spun out completely, which is probably in part why they are having to include the non-free firmware drivers today. Linux has not had as clear of of a 'free software only' stance inside the kernel as it should have, and that in part is cause for this situation today.

              Anyway, cheers to devuan for succeeding in their 2.0 goal, and here is hoping they start using all devuan signed/hosted packages instead of falling back on debian fileservers for some of their file listings.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @09:13PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @09:13PM (#691612)

                The answer to non-free software is not more non-free software, regardless of how abysmal the current situation is.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:42PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:42PM (#692886)

                I really liked Trisquel as a concept but found that I just couldn't use it as my primary OS

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:14PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:14PM (#691554)

              If you're so pure, then don't go buying hardware with nothing but non-free firmware drivers. That way you won't get non-free software installed on your machine.

              In the real world, there are people who need to run Devuan on machines available to them, or in the marketplace. Many of them are free software adherents, but they need to be able to get online to start developing free firmware.

              • (Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Monday June 11 2018, @11:51PM

                by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @11:51PM (#691668) Journal

                don't go buying hardware with nothing but non-free firmware drivers.

                In the real world, there are people who need to run... machines available to them, or in the marketplace.

                You may be surprised to learn about what happens in the real world, to judge by your pushing these two contradictory arguments.

                In the real world, I have a couple laptops with internal wifi adapters that wouldn't work without non-free firmware/drivers. Because they were "machines available to" me. But to assume that that means "nothing but non-free" is rather unimaginative. The machines work fine with no non-free anything because each has a $5 USB wifi stick from ebay that doesn't require anything non-free to run.

                Unless someone tries to install Devuan 2.0 on them, in which case they will get packages installed from non-free even though there is no need for them and every reason not to and no one asked for them.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:56PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:56PM (#691542)

            it's understandable that you are a lazy, whining whore, but you shouldn't expect that every distro pander to your ignorance and dependence. or the disgusting hardware vendors you blindly and so willingly fund. Principled distributions can take a stand for freedom and you can take your whore ass down the road or back to slavewareOS where you likely belong.

            • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:50PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:50PM (#691563)

              Damn straight I should. If it doesn't work out of the box, you fucked up. Windows and OSX work out of the box just fine, and that is what 99.9% of people care about dumbass. Eat a cinderblock.

              Principled distributions can take a stand for freedom and you can take your whore ass down the road or back to slavewareOS where you likely belong.

              Yes such "Principled"people like RMS who writes about having nose sex with flowers. These are the losers who support this nonsense.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by DECbot on Monday June 11 2018, @03:08PM (6 children)

      by DECbot (832) on Monday June 11 2018, @03:08PM (#691425) Journal

      One big change, ZFS on root is now supported in the ASCII repository--so there's less dicking around to make that work. Also, Java 8 is in the ASCII repository but not in the Jessie repository (minecraft is the reason I know this). I've been meaning to upgrade, this looks like a good reason to apt-get dist-upgrade.

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Monday June 11 2018, @03:46PM (5 children)

        by Nerdfest (80) on Monday June 11 2018, @03:46PM (#691439)

        Is it possible to run a KDE desktop on it without systemd? I haven't been following the metasticization.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by DECbot on Monday June 11 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)

          by DECbot (832) on Monday June 11 2018, @03:57PM (#691446) Journal

          I subscribe to Xfce and MATE desktop enviroments. My last foray into KDE was Slackware 13.37--so, I have no idea about anything current. Though you might be in luck. According to the Devuan website [devuan.org], the default is Xfce, but it can run Cinnamon, KDE, LXQt, and MATE without any special modification. Naturally, this is all without systemd.

          --
          cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:50PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:50PM (#692894)

            Yes, but it block systemd packages by default?

            no. ferk it. I'll just try it myself..

        • (Score: 2) by MadTinfoilHatter on Monday June 11 2018, @05:04PM

          by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Monday June 11 2018, @05:04PM (#691477)

          Yes. I've been running a machine with Devuan Ascii + KDE since the beta came out, and it works fine. I had to do some d*cking around with dbus/consolekit conf files in order to make reboot& shutdown work properly, though. Don't know if they've fixed that for the actual release.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday June 11 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)

          by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Monday June 11 2018, @05:49PM (#691506)
          Don't know about KDE 4+ but if you liked KDE 3.5 then you might consider the Trinity Desktop Environment, based on my personal experience it runs great on Devuan. I've been using TDE since KDE 4 came out and Devuan for the last 3 months (upgraded from Debian Wheezy finally),

          Live DVD of TDE on Devuan [exegnulinux.net] to try out the combo.

          Trinity Desktop Environment home page [trinitydesktop.org]

          Installation of TDE on a clean Devaun install was a piece of cake. The only issues I've run into so far were all because I did the "Base" install of TDE to keep the disk image small. I've had to manually add some things like ksnapshot and kmix that would have been part of a default install because of it.
          --
          "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday June 11 2018, @11:37PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @11:37PM (#691663) Journal

            I liked KDE3.5 better than current KDEs. The problem is integration with other software, which works with current KDE, but didn't work when I tried Trinity. Since it used to work, my guess is the other software adapted itself to current KDE APIs. But it means that for me Trinity isn't a viable choice. (Mate, xfce, etc. do work, however. So the problem could have been with Trinity ... I tested this a couple of years ago, and they may well have fixed it.)

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 1) by zoward on Monday June 11 2018, @03:54PM

    by zoward (4734) on Monday June 11 2018, @03:54PM (#691444)

    ...so old it wouldn't support the hardware I wanted to run it on without rolling a custom kernel. Now that ASCII's released I'll be installing it on my home server first chance I get. Congrats to the Devuan team for reaching the next milestone!

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:00PM (#691545)

    i have no plans to use it anytime soon but i'm glad non systemd distros exist, just in case i decide to jump ship one day.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @12:34AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @12:34AM (#691689)

    For someone new to Linux but has used computers for over thirty years, would Devuan be a good Linux distro to try out for home computing usage?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:45AM

      by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:45AM (#691754) Journal

      I'd go with Ubuntu/Mint/??? first: it's very plug and play.

      Then go to explore.
      Debian (never used Devuan) is not so plug and play. Depends on how much work you are willing to do, I guess.

      Best advice: distro hop like a fiend. Explore and have fun.

      If you get linuxfromscratch running! Home run.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @11:47AM (#691860)

      Depends on what your goal is. Do you want to learn linux quickly? Use Devuan or another binary package distro (debian, void, arch, etc), and set up everything and get used to it, then try gentoo, crux, sourcemage, lfs etc. and learn how it all really fits together. Do you want quick, easy, and everything just works? Ubuntu, mint, solus, elementary, or one of the many other distros that come fully set up, automagically doing everything for you. Debian (which Devuan is based on) is known to be solid and stable, but many packages will be older and may be lacking the latest features. Ubuntu and mint are similar, but easy installs and use for people who aren't as savvy or need something quick. Arch and other rolling-release distros tend to be less stable, but have the very latest software. Source-based distros need everything to be compiled but are generally more customizable and avoid some of the pitfalls of binary distributions, but have their own headaches and a much steeper learner curve.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:27AM (2 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:27AM (#691753) Journal

    I got caught by a kernel oops using Manjaro (kernel not loading and the default is having only one kernel to boot) and tried to install Void, but needed my laptop back and running quickly: void install was quick but setting wireless to work was going to take, possibly, too much time.

    I finally put my Manjaro disk back in and after making sure I have a trusted boot kernel installed as well as a newer one, I was up and running quickly.
    The kernel thing actually surprised me: it was my first problem with Manjaro.

    Back on topic, a bit: Debian is slower than Arch, so I'll stick with Manjaro, I guess, but I'll keep investigating systemd-less systems. Too little time, too few machines.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:55AM (1 child)

      by cubancigar11 (330) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:55AM (#691767) Homepage Journal

      I tried void but the live cd won't boot for me. After dicking around for a month I have finally settled at Manjaro which has been running flawlessly for me so far, though after changing jobs I sparsely use Linux. Manjaro is to me what Kubuntu could have been.

      Good to know about kernel issues, I will keep it in my mind. Any idea what caused it?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 12 2018, @10:52AM

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @10:52AM (#691851) Journal

        The new kernel has some modules that aren't loading, though it's fixed now, I believe.

        Anywho, before you upgrade, make sure you have at least one known good kernel always installed before it upgrades you (so two kernels available). This should be the default, IMHO.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Deeo Kain on Tuesday June 12 2018, @12:08PM

    by Deeo Kain (5848) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @12:08PM (#691862)

    I turned to Devuan when a systemd laptop whould sit 1.5 minutes on the error message:

    A start job is running for udev wait for isk-by\x2duuid-*** (**s / 3min)

    The UUID was my swap partition's.
    I thought to myself: "That's no big deal, when the system will be online I'll just correct the swap setup script so that next boot will run fine:
    Then I was confronted with this systemd unit file:

    /lib/systemd/system/swap.target
    # This file is part of systemd.
    #
    # systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    # under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
    # the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
    # (at your option) any later version.

    [Unit]
    Description=Swap
    Documentation=man:systemd.special(7)

    There was no way I could modify it short of installing systemd source code, debug it, patch it, recompile it and install my custom version over the distro's one.
    Then I told myself: "To Hell with systemd, gimme sysv init back!"
    And I installed Devuan Jessie.

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