Devuan revisited and its repository maze

What distrowatch calls Debuan 2.1 in its weekly is also listed as a “fixed” release.  Since when is anything based on Debian perceived as fixed unless it intentionally had its package management software released. Alternatively any live “image” is fixed unless you update its software.  Should someone clarify what such terms mean to Distrowatch?

See, we can even defend the honor of those we openly have disliked in the past.

Devuan’s, not debuan’s, repositories for its 2.xx series based on Debian Stretch, is Ascii.

Next edition which is called Beowulf is still under testing, pkgs for which can be found on

http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/dists/testing/
http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/dists/beowulf/

or

http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dists/testing/
http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dists/beowulf/

Are you confused about debian/antiX/MX/devuan/Refracta editions?

Debian 10 Buster became stable a few months ago, the rest of the systems had to follow but took their time.  This is done every two years and creates a wave of confusion, especially those on forked versions of Debian, like antiX, MX, devuan, refracta, etc.  Even more dangerous and confusing it is if you are using testing and although testing during debian stretch was buster it now becomes bullseye, while your antiX/MX/Devuan is testing alongside Buster still.

After antiX announced 19 (Marielle Franco) as its current stable branch, MS followed its mothership the week later (a few days ago), while Devuan/Refracta are still chasing Stretch (Debian 9), what they call Devuan 2 or ascii.

So here it is, to take the confusion away from numbers and names:

Debian         *   Debian       *  AntiX/MX   *  Devuan
the last good1 *   7   Wheezy   *    13       *  0  beta-testing
old old stable *   8   Jessie   *    15       *  1 jessie (old-stable)
old stable     *   9   Stretch  *    17       *  2 ascii (stable)
stable         *  10   Buster   *    19       *  3 beowulf(testing)
testing        *  11   Bullseye *    21       *  4 chimaera (next testing)
unstable       *       sid      *    sid      *       ceres

Brief look at FigOS and upgrade to ascii

According to the “officially official” devuan forum administrator, FigOS is not a Devuan derivative because it is also based on Refracta and another distribution (puppy).  I run FigOS live, the latest version 2.6 and I really was looking for the puppy aspects of it, since it is not Devuan, which I have been keeping a distance of.  I am not too much of a fun of iceWM and gdm and xfce4 stuff, so I transfromed every desktop part into my familiar openbox.  I left everything else in tact.  It installed as reliably and easily as anything utilizing the Refracta tools marvel.  Nothing else works as reliably as this installer. 

Obmenu-Generator, how to get it running on any linux

Basically I am reproducing a very good article of instructions before it vanishes.

03262019  revised for debian/mint/ubuntu/devuan/antix/mx users see below:

[edit] Today Feb 15rh I am reposting this article and made some additions and corrections as the instructions may not work in all installations as I have found out.  With this correction it works in all installations we have covered.  Today we are adding Antix-linux to the list.

Hopefully the author will not mind for this no-profit reproduction.  The original, today, can be found on lxlinux.com/obmenu-generator.  Obmenu-generator works so well and can be edited to the maximum possible way that an Openbox Menu system can deliver.

Devuan, EOL – trust, suspicion, and unanswered questions

First things first.  Those of us involved in this project had an internal debate from day one whether to cover Devuan development or not.  All but one person here, yours truly, argued that Devuan would never be able to overcome and change the psychopathology evident in Debian developer community and the inherent elitism against the common individual user.  If you are not directing the departmental budget of an IT enterprise nobody in that community would give a rat’s penny of what your problem may be.  Seeking help as a common user you must put up with tons of unsubstantiated arrogance, irony, and elitism.  This is also evident in the DNG list where devuan developers and their pre-split backroom buddies are larking, pretending they are Devian without the infrastructure of Debian.  It is like a life-raft’s  officers and buddies pretending to be the officers operating a supertanker.

Refracta 9 and Obarun excellence + Artix

The Refracta team is throwing out a glimpse of the nearly ready Devuan 2.0 (ascii) with a new iso release that can be found here:

Check out my kernel version 4.15 Can you tell it is running on OpenRC? All those green and and blue OKs while it is booting up it is proof that it is!

https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/testing/

I made several installations of the same system in various machines, some being 10yrs old.  Not a problem.  I also installed OpenRC on them and replaced the sysv-rc and it  runs fine.  I can’t really say there is a difference while running it with OpenRC but Ram use is low while coming to an idle on the desktop.  (I only use Openbox).  Experts say that when you upgrade from

Brief vacation – suspension of sysdfree blog

Due to unforseen circumstances and planning of upgrading the site we have little to contribute at this moment, although we are still at it.

Obarun has been our recent favorite to explore and we will present our findings soon.  Please be a little patient and feel free to contribute.  Obarun’s “makeiso” package seems very exciting.  It is like Refracta on Arch.

Runit as 2nd stage service supervisor on Devuan & postfix – continued

This is a sequence of 2 posts by Geoff in Devuan’s forum @ dev1.galaxy.org

This is too good to pass or edit so I am incorporating the whole “wiki item on runit and postfix”

Having read the message on DNG by Steve Litt about process supervisors :-

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/2 … d3.en.html

I was inspired to investigate for myself. This is not a recipe on how to use runit as your init system, but some notes on using runit as a stage 2 process supervisor.

Of the supervisors mentioned by Steve, only runit was available in the jessie repository so that is what I had a look at.

Refracta Devuan 2 Openbox Eudev OpenRC ready!

It all started with curiosity and we all know what this may get for a cat.  But we are not cats, and discoveries were always made by the curious.  Neither the labels unstable, testing, experimental, nor the initial experience was enough to keep this bear away from the honey.

Devuan testing new amprolla3 powered repository

If you like to test the new amprolla3 powered repository system here is a small list of optional /etc/apt/sources.list

deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-backports main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-security main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-updates main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/ ascii-proposed main contrib non-free
deb https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/ ascii-proposed-security main contrib non-free
 

Freak Devuan experiment that did not backfire Devian/Debuan

As Devuan users have not been getting any feedback for why have things become so stale for two months, there are no updates seen in Jessie or Ascii, while the Debian train is running away with a daily influx of updated packages, there is not much convinvcing anyone can do for people to be patient.  Having bugs to deal with is one thing, not having bugs and expecting things to just evolve is a different issue.  So I thought what if?

What if questions sometimes break the best of systems.  So I cleaned my ascii installation and backed it up (using the classic dd on the installation’s partition).  If it broke I would not try to fix it too much, I’d rather just restore it and report back how and when it broke so others wouldn’t try the same thing.

Linux kernel 4.13 on Devuan and on Artix [Fixed]

My test machine is an aging, stock (unmodified), mass produced enterprise grade, machine made by Dell.  Ever since my Manjaro days (Manjaro-OpenRC) when the first beta edition of Linux413 was released, it was the only kernel I have ever had problems with.*  It always appeared to boot fine and only when X was about to start all input devices would freeze.  Nothing in Xorg.0.log seemed to appear as an error.  The machine would just lock up and only mechanically could it be rebooted.