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

Debian based distros beware of apt clearing your cache

These past few days when apt and its coworkers were updated, apt by default deletes cached packages after the installation.  So if you were used to keep the cached pkgs so you can reinstall without redownloading, or sharing your cache with other installations, or using a common cache in a network to save bandwidth, DO NOT USE APT, USE APT-GET. 

fig os 2.8 — first version from refracta 9

Since we recently worked and reported on figOS 2.6, we took it up to ascii, installed OpenRC and openbox to it, Refracta published a beta version of its refracta9 (ascii based) 32bit iso.  FigOS published a 2.8 version based on this new Refracta9.  Note: both of those systems are 32bit but just a few hours ago the 64bit also appeared on SurgeForge as well.  If you are number 2 downloading it you are the one after us 🙂

Distrowatch has only announced Refracta as a 32bit only system, which we think is a mistake.  Here is the FigOS announcement as it came out on codeinfig.wordpress.com

April 19, 2018

a little over a week ago, this post mentioned plans for the next version of fig os:

https://codeinfig.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/the-next-versions-of-fig-os-probably/

since then, ive updated mkfigos 2.6 to 2.7 with the same refracta iso, and now that refracta 9 is in beta, ive taken the recent 2.7 and fig os 2.8 is now here:

What is a distro – anyway?

After some puzzling evidence in trying to revise a list of non-systemd init distributions, forks, clones, derivatives, and “retouches” in which FigOS didn’t seem to be easily admitted, and in our quest to come up with explicit guidelines of what is what on the list, and….. since we are not developers and/or distro publishers ourselves, we decided to get some guidance of someone who has published a complete operating system himself what he thinks.  Let’s see what he has to say about it.

 

What is a Distro? (by FigOSdev)

Defining a distro in a technical way is probably useful, if it can be done accurately. For non-technical people, I explain that a distro is:
“Like the’ make and model’ of a car– except that it can replace all the software on your computer.”

Fig OS or the evolution of refractahrpup (Refracta and puppy = devpup?)

At last and not least, a distribution that is truly different than most others and most of all clones.  Fig OS has a vision that is fresh and possibly the way to do things in the future.  One may call it a hybrid, if hybrids didn’t already have a negative connotation.  It is best to allow the creator to speak about it on his own than for us trying to describe his work.  Promised not to be talking about Devuan any more we are breaking our rule partially, we are allowing someone else do the talking, and Refracta is not officially Devuan anyway.  And why did Devuan refused to add this to their list of clones?  Did they ban the persons arguing they should?  Hmmm….. …!  Maybe this makes Fig OS even more interesting.

Fig OS

Using fig, I originally set out to create a program that produced html tables of Puppy Linux distro analysis– in other words, there are countless derivatives and I wanted to examine and output the differences.

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 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.

Speculation or worst case scenario for Devuan?

From a discussion on devuan forum dev1galaxy.org

About Devuan

 FOSSuser

Well, Debian software is behind mainstream distros anyway, Devuan will be on a par with Debian in the next release.
It just took time to purge the system, initially, of the entangled systemd.

Systemd is proposed to work like MS Registry, controlling most things from one encrypted file – totally against unix & linux principles.

foobar

@FOSSuser: Instead of packaging stuff Devuan packagers prefer to fight over the next iteration of their build infrastructure. Nobody has any idea where things should be headed, the current infrastructure is unmaintained (e.g. the Devuan gitlag is unsupported upstream by now!) and new people are being demotivated at every turn.