OK, thanks for the tip.  =-)

Yes, I do too.
I've come to see sudo as a rather dangerous thing if used (or rather set up) lightly.
It's something I picked up at the PCLinux OS forum.

I only use sudo along with specific user_xxxx files in sudoers.d which are set up just for for me to do routine things which need admin rights.
eg: dmesg, updatedb, shutdown/reboot, linsssd and such.   

Yes, I was about to ask with respect to marking files as manually installed and the effect is had.

Thanks a lot for your input.

Best,

A.

Ahh ...
So I've been confusing xfce4 which is the metapackage with the xfce desktop package.

Needless to say, I feel quite embarrassed.  =-/

Thanks a lot for clearing this up for me.

Best,

A.

*cleverly, choose one of the higher-level packages in the list, not the low-level ones that only add certain features   I'd suggest xfdesktop4 to start with.

aptitude install xfdesktop4

Precede with sudo if you must (personal taste, I'd strongly (very) prefer the 'old' *nix way of su into the root account)

As the package is actually already installed, it won't do anything, except marking it in the database as manually installed and therefore not subject to an auto-prune event. Which is what you're after

Here it is again, without the extra backslash at the end:

apt install  xfconf xfdesktop4 xfwm4 xfce4-terminal xfce4-session xfce4-xkb-plugin xfce4-panel \
thunar thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin xfce4-notifyd libnotify-bin mesa-utils  \
xfce4-power-manager xfce4-cpugraph-plugin  xfwm4-themes

More info:

Indeed ...  =-D !

I did think of that too.
But ...

At some time or another ie: a week, a month or even a year later, I surely will have to use apt-get autoremove for something or other.
eg: general spring clean-up.

And that's when things will go south very quickly.
Isn't this so?

Thanks for your input.

A.

I.e., if you don't use the autoremove command, they're still installed.

OK.

Cannot seem to get it done.

eg:

groucho@devuan:~$ sudo apt-get purge orage
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
gtk2-engines-xfce libical2 libkeybinder-3.0-0 libxfce4ui-utils xfce4-appfinder xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  orage* xfce4*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 5723 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
groucho@devuan:~$ 

But this seems to be a Devuan/Debian thing as I have been told that in other distributions (eg: fedora) you can uninstall orage without much ado.

I could always uninstall orage and then reinstall the packages which were removed (xfce4 gtk2-engines-xfce libical2 libkeybinder-3.0-0 libxfce4ui-utils xfce4-appfinder xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin) but then re-installing xfce4 would drag along orage again.

Catch22?

Best,

A.

apt install  xfconf xfdesktop4 xfwm4 xfce4-terminal xfce4-session xfce4-xkb-plugin xfce4-panel \
thunar thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin xfce4-notifyd libnotify-bin mesa-utils  \
xfce4-power-manager xfce4-cpugraph-plugin  xfwm4-themes \

Of course, now you don't have to type all that. You could just copy/paste it or modify it to fit your needs.

If you install the packages individually, you can remove them individually. You can even do this if the packages were automatically installed because of a dependency. When you 'apt-get install' a package that was automatically installed, its status gets changed to manually installed. Then, when you remove the metapackage, the manually installed packages won't be removed.

We may be drifting off topic here ...

But jo make my position clear: I'm not nocking Linux or Devuan, quite the contrary.

It is just that (IMO) what XFCE does by forcing the installation of (unneeded) Orage and on top of that, making it impossible to uninstall without also uninstalling XFCE altogether is contrary to the basic philosophy behind Linux:

------------------- > Do one thing and do it well. 

There are other programs/maintainers that do this same sort of thing.
Must have all learnt how to do it at the Redmond Academy.  8-D!!!

Well ...
It's the same type of different opinion than generated the need for Devuan.
systemd is also a different opinion on how to do things and also contrary to the basic philosophy behind Linux. 

Just what I am doing: openbox and tint2 work quite well for the time being.

It is of the utmost importance, not only to both of us but for how Linux will continue to develop.

Thanks a lot for your input.

Best,

A.

My point being that getting Orage installed by default when installing the XFCE desktop does not seem to have any justification.

Agreed. But the mantainer of the package xfce4 dont agree with us. May be he/she thinks that the average XFCE user wants to have a nice calendar application installed by default. Different opinions, not big deal IMHO. My way of work with this is very simple: not install the package xfce4; I try to find the minimal set of packages needed to get XFCE working. This is why I need a lot of time before finish a new instalation.

The point Altoid talk about is very important for me. I like the Debian and Devuan aproach to have a very fine grained dependencies system. Other systems (even free software ones) have it more coarse. When I want a very minimal system, I dont like the attitude of "I know better" from some packagers, they say "install all this staff". We are not clueless childrens. Just an example: I skip the "Select and install software" step in the Devuan expert install and then I uninstall a few packages more; you cant do that on other systems.

Of course ...

My point being that getting Orage installed by default when installing the XFCE desktop does not seem to have any justification.
Or is it an essential part of XFCE, without which XFCE does not function at all or is in any way hampered?

Thanks.

A.

It's a pity that installing a desktop drags so much stuff in with it ...

The defaults of any OS instalations are just that, the defaults. Using Devuan we can not use the defaults and install only the packages we want; it is a time consuming task, but this way is easier to get to your ideal instalation. I do. But when I try a new system (say, Devuan Beowulf) a need between a week and a month to get it to my taste. With other OS (non free) I needed more than two months and the end result is not what I really wanted.

On the other hand, I'm glad to know that your problem is fixed.

I managed to fix the problem but have no idea why it happened or how to avoid it happening.

To fix it, with the USB installation in place, I booted with a Devuan ASCII 2.0.0_i386_DVD-1 installer DVD, went to Rescue Mode and reinstalled GRUB to the USB stick (/dev/sdb).

And that was it.

The drive booted into GRUB and upon logging in I installed XFCE4 which, after a reboot, started without any issues (for the time being).

rant
It's a pity that installing a desktop drags so much stuff in with it ...
eg: I did not ask for an Orage Calendar or Orage Globaltime.
But there it is.

And uninstalling it also uninstalls XFCE4 (and only XFCE4).
Reminds me of some similar MS practises we have all suffered at some time or another ...
/rant

But the problem is fixed.

Thanks for your input.

A.

I've repeated the procedure.
But in case there was some issue with the SDCard, this time I carried out the installation using the same devuan_ascii_2.0.0_i386_netinst.iso burnt to a CD instead of dd'd to an SD Card.

Again, the CD-ROM was correctly verified.

This time the installation went through without any issues but the result has been the same as before, in the two machines I have.

The fdisk -l output is the same, only difference is where the boot partition starts (2048 instead of 4096):

groucho@devuan:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdf
[sudo] password for groucho: 
Disk /dev/sdf: 7.2 GiB, 7757398016 bytes, 15151168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000312cd

Device     Boot    Start      End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdf1  *        2048  9220095 9218048  4.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sdf2        9222142 15151103 5928962  2.8G  5 Extended
/dev/sdf5        9222144 12294143 3072000  1.5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdf6       12296192 15151103 2854912  1.4G 83 Linux
groucho@devuan:~$ 

A.