Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 "ASCII" A few years ago, when the Debian project opted to switch from using SysV init software to the more modern systemd alternative, the Devuan project was formed to provide a Debian-like operating system which continued to use SysV init. It took about two years for the Devuan project to get all of its infrastructure in place and release its first stable release, but the developers generally managed to deliver on their goal to provide a fork of Debian than was (by default) free of the systemd software.



The Devuan team has recently published their second stable release, codename ASCII. Devuan 2.0.0 is approximately equivalent to Debian 9 Stretch in the packages and technology it provides. Though, as before, systemd has been stripped from Devuan and SysV init is available in its place. The release announcement mentions the OpenRC service manager is also available as an alternative to systemd at install time.



Devuan 2.0.0 runs on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 processors and there are also a handful of builds for ARM-powered computers like the Raspberry Pi. I decided to try the 64-bit option and found it is available in multiple flavours, including a live disc, an install disc and a minimal disc. I downloaded a live disc that was 1GB in size and featured the Xfce desktop environment.



Booting from the live disc brings up a menu asking if we would like to start the live desktop environment, load the operating system into RAM and then launch the desktop or boot with failsafe options. Whichever option we choose, the system quickly loads from the disc and displays the Xfce desktop.



The live desktop session features a theme and wallpaper which combines grey and purple to produce a visually uninteresting first impression. There is a panel housing the application menu, task switcher and system tray at the top of the screen. At the bottom of the display we find a dock with some quick-launch icons for the file manager, web browser and virtual terminal. On the desktop are icons for opening the file manager, reading the distribution's release notes, launching the installer and changing the desktop font sizes. I really like the ability to increase or decrease font sizes with a click as it is a feature that often takes digging through multiple configuration screens. Unfortunately, the text labels under the desktop icons do not handle being resized well. When we first start using Devuan, the text under the icons reads "Small", "Large" and "_Release Notes". Increasing the size one notch makes the text read "SM", "LA" and "_RE".





Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 -- Reading the release notes

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The release notes are relatively brief, but provide information on such topics as non-free firmware (it is included for wireless support) and default repositories (non-free and contrib repositories are disabled). Default account usernames and passwords are also mentioned. While brief, the documentation gives us a good idea of what we will be starting with if we install Devuan.



Installing



Devuan has its own system installer. While there is a text-based version available, launching the installer from the live desktop opens a graphical installer. I believe it is worth covering the installer's many steps because it is almost certainly the longer installation process I have gone through to date.



First, we are asked for the root password, which is available in the release notes file. Then we are shown a screen warning us the installer's windows may not fit on small screens (or display properly in a virtual machine) and, in that case, we should use the text installer. Then I was warned that the grub-pc package was missing and might need to be installed manually, though the reason for this was unclear. We are then shown a long list of file system options, such as placing /home on a separate partition, using encryption and whether to use UUIDs in place of traditional device names in the system's fstab file. It is important to read through the entire list and toggle the right options because this will affect future options we will be shown and determine how the installer sets up our operating system. After that, we are asked to manually set up partitions using the GParted desktop software or the cfdisk text console partition manager. Then we are asked which partition should be used for the root file system and, in my case, which device will host the /home partition. Devuan supports working with just the ext2/3/4 file systems.



Next, we move onto selecting our time zone from a list. We are asked which language locales should be set up, with options being pulled from a cryptic list with entries like "en_US.UTF-8". We then select our keyboard layout from a similar set of lists. The installer then switches over to a terminal to ask if it should proceed with formatting our hard drive. Files are copied to our drive and then I was asked an unusual question. I was shown a screen with three options, with the first being to copy files to a /target directory and install the GRUB boot loader packages. The second was to open a chroot environment to perform custom actions. The third was to "continue" without installing a boot loader. I took the "copy files" option, half expecting it to fail since I'd been warned the grub-pc package was missing, but the installer accepted my choice and moved on.



We are then shown a screen asking us to create a user account. The account can be given sudo access, with additional options to "use sudo by default" and to "use sudo for shutdown only". These options don't have a clear explanation, but I think the last one implies any user with sudo access can shutdown the computer. The following screens get us to create a password for ourselves and the root account and then the installer disappears, apparently finished.



Early impressions



Honestly, after the long install process with odd file system, GRUB and user configuration options, I did not have high hopes that Devuan would boot the first time I went through the installation, but it did. The operating system booted and presented me with a graphical login screen where I could sign into the Xfce 4.12 desktop.





Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 -- The application menu

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The desktop was uncluttered, there were virtually no pop-ups, no welcome screen and no distractions. Xfce was pleasantly responsive. At first I wasn't a fan of the dock at the bottom of the screen taking up real estate, but I grew to appreciate having quick access to programs I was using on a regular basis.



Hardware



A fresh install of Devuan took up about 3.6GB of disk space and logging into the Xfce desktop required 215MB of RAM. The distribution worked well with my desktop computer's hardware. The system booted quickly, the desktop was responsive and audio was set to a reasonable level. Videos played smoothly and I found Devuan to be stable on my desktop's hardware. My only complaint was that Devuan did not recognize or respond to my keyboard's media keys, such as the volume-up and volume-down controls.



I found Devuan did not integrate into its VirtualBox environment and could not make use of my computer's full screen resolution while running as a guest. Further complicating things, I could not find VirtualBox modules in the distribution's repositories. I was able to install the build-essential package and then build VirtualBox's generic guest modules. After that, I was able to increase Devuan's screen resolution.





Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 -- Running Firefox and LibreOffice

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Applications



Devuan ships with an unusual combination of popular open source applications and some less common programs. Popular items include Firefox, LibreOffice, the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the VLC media player. But then we are also given the lesser known Quod Libet music player, the Ex Falso media tag editor and the mutt terminal e-mail client. The Orage Calendar application, a PDF document viewer and printer manager are present too. The Thunar file manager is included along with a tool to rename groups of files and there is a process monitor. Devuan ships with the Wicd network manager to help us get on-line. In the background we find version 4.9 of the Linux kernel.



The operating system includes a handful of tools to adjust the look and behaviour of the Xfce desktop. Most of these worked very well for me and I was able to easily change the theme, fonts and window behaviour. Back when Devuan's release candidate came out, I tested the distribution and run into a problem with the utility which changes the desktop wallpaper. This program would lock-up and use 100% of my CPU, even after the window had been closed. The runaway process had to be killed manually through the task manager. I was pleased to find that problem had been fixed by the time the final Devuan 2.0.0 release was published. This was perhaps the only significant difference I encountered between testing the release candidate and the final release.



Earlier I mentioned Devuan did not work with my keyboard's media keys and I believe that goes hand-in-hand with another issue: Devuan does not have a volume control widget in the system tray. There is a PulseAudio control panel we can launch from the Xfce application menu, but by default there is no global volume control; each application is left to handle audio volume (or not) on its own.



Managing software



Software on Devuan can be handled through the Synaptic package manager or by using the APT command line tools. Synaptic is a fast and capable package manager which can install, remove and upgrade software. It can also perform simple searches and configure software repositories. Synaptic handles package installs and upgrades in batches rather than queuing actions in the background like most modern software centres. It also takes a package-oriented view of managing software rather than focusing on desktop software, the way mintInstall and GNOME Software do. I was happy to find Synaptic performed its actions quickly and without any problems.





Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 -- Managing packages with Synaptic

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Much of Devuan's software is over a year old at this point and some users may wish to get more up to date desktop software. One way to do this is by using Flatpak packages. While Flatpak support is not included in Devuan by default, the Flatpak framework can be installed from the repositories. This allows us to install and run Flatpak bundles. Projects which supply AppImage packages can also be accessed. Unfortunately Devuan users cannot make use of Snap packages due to that technology's reliance on systemd, which is excluded from Devuan.



Conclusions



When I am trying out a desktop distribution, what really tends to divide the field of Linux distributions in my mind is not whether the system uses MATE or Plasma, or whether the underlying package manager uses RPM or Deb files. What tends to leave a lasting impression with me is whether the desktop environment, its applications and controls feel like a cooperative, cohesive experience or like a jumble of individual tools that happen to be part of the same operating system. In my opinion Ubuntu running the Unity desktop and Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop are good examples of the cohesive approach. The way openSUSE's administration tools work together provides another example. Like them or hate them, I think most people can see there is an overall design, a unifying vision, being explored with those distributions. I believe Devuan falls into the other category, presenting the user with a collection of utilities and features where some assembly is still required.



This comes across in little ways. For example, many distributions ship Mozilla's Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird e-mail client together as a set, and they generally complement each other. Devuan ships Firefox, but then its counterpart is the mutt console e-mail program which feels entirely out of place with the rest of the desktop software. The PulseAudio sound mixing utility is included, but its system tray companion is not present by default. Even the system installer, which switches back and forth between graphical windows and a text console, feels more like a collection of uncoordinated prompts rather than a unified program or script. Some people may like the mix-and-match approach, but I tend to prefer distributions where it feels like the parts are fitted together to create a unified experience.





Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0 -- Running the Falkon browser using Flatpak

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What I found was that Devuan provided an experience where I had to stop and think about where items were or how I was going to use them rather than having the pieces seamlessly fit together. However, once I got the system set up in a way that was more to my liking, I appreciated the experience provided. Devuan offers a stable, flexible platform. Once I shaped the operating system a little, I found it to be fast, light and capable. Having a fairly large repository of software available along with Flatpak support provided a solid collection of applications on a conservative operating system foundation. It was a combination I liked.



In short, I think Devuan has some rough edges and setting it up was an unusually long and complex experience by Linux standards. I certainly wouldn't recommend Devuan to newcomers. However, a day or two into the experience, Devuan's stability and performance made it a worthwhile journey. I think Devuan may be a good alternative to people who like running Debian or other conservative distributions such as Slackware. I suspect I may soon be running Devuan's Raspberry Pi build on my home server where its lightweight nature will be welcome. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Devuan GNU+Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9/10 from 373 review(s).

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