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/

Where to move to after Arch-Linux-based non-systemd systems?

VD, HIV, STD, Zstd

The deeper issue here is “what is the relationship of Arch-Linux and Orwell?”

Two of the most common intrusive sites reported by linux users that are placed on top of the list of a firewall, so nothing goes in and out between their machine and those sites’ servers, are Google and Facebook.  Google on the one hand, in order to play nice against the free/open software community, has been contributing resources, information, and free/open software to improve their image.  MS purchased github, IBM purchased RedHat, or should we say they made their relationship more formal.  Some developers have fallen for it.  Facebook on the other hand is notorious of flooding the machines of their innocent and unsuspecting users with questionable code.  Facebook not only knows who you really are, what you really like, what you think and what you are interested in, in the vast majority of cases they know in real time your exact location and may even have the capability of keeping track of your moves.  Simply if you have an account on facebook and accessed it once through your “smart” phone, they know.  If you access facebook from your desktop, but on smart phone you only use your google account, they know.  They, they, who is they?  If you are really asking we can go on comments for as far as you can take it.

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

Knoppix defies the “mother-ship” and leaves systemd OUT!

It is hard to tell from their web-site, at least if you don’t speak German and rely on the English text, that Knopper, founder or Knoppix, has made an effort from some time to provide freedom in init systems,  After getting sysvinit to work (once again on a debian based distribution) this latest version 8.6 not only does it ship without systemd and associates, it contains a conflict pkg that prevents systemd from reinstalling.  The package is called “no-systemd”.  We welcome Knoppix to the wide non-systemd community and we wish it endless popularity.

The pkg lists of comparing the last two editions 8.2 and 8.6 (and a mysterious 8.4), reveal the effort.  8.6 pkg list  8.2 pkg list

AntiX has a package called systemd-must-die which is very similar 🙂

Since it is all debian based you can seek and install both and compare.

What do we need computers for? What if!

First I would like to welcome cynwulf1 to the community and in specific to the small sub-sector of the community of contributors.  Cynwulf1 appears to have been around this sport long and with a wide spectrum of experience.  He recently contributed an article and some comments on the world of BSDism.

While recently I have worked closer with some of the creators of systems we use I have tried to learn how they think, or how they think differently from us users of systems.  The question that appeared to me is whether they can possibly know or care what “people need” or are they just driven by what they need for themselves, which in some cases is a system to work on, while creating systems.

Do you dislike vi but love Nano? How about Pico?

Then this makes it two of us.  Of course  our reasoning may be different.

April 24 2019 – GNU nano 4.2 “Tax the rich, pay the teachers“

*** this is actually the name of the 4.2 edition, I am not making it up

For a while I had paid no attention to the evolution of Nano just generally thought it was a mildly refreshing version of pico (for those old enough to remember – pico and pine then nano and alpine now).  Recently I’ve been seeing it coming up on upgrades and thought what could possibly been developing in nano, when it seemed perfect for decades.

But I did notice this while following Arch based distros.  Out of curiosity I checked my Debian based AntiX – Sid.  Here is the difference:

Debian (antix, mx, refracta, devuan) SID:  nano/unstable,now 3.2-2 amd64 [installed] small, friendly text editor inspired by Pico

Arch (Obarun, Artix, Hyperbola, Parabola, Manjaro, etc) STABLE:

system/nano 4.2-1 (base) [installed] Pico editor clone with enhancements

What about upstream, you would ask.  If you are really interested look no further than here:

2019 April 24 – GNU nano 4.2 “Tax the rich, pay the teachers”

Richard Stallman on surveillance engines and rogue regimes