FWIW, I got started on this all due to xlibre, 32-bit, and my awbfl.org browser.  It's all working, which is much appreciated here!

Andy

p.s., next up, may take a swing at armhf support?

Actually for testing purposes and because my parents use it. But also so that the kernel and packages are up to date and receive the latest security updates.

Yes, probably. ;-)

Well, I never really thought about a backported kernel and didn't really know what you could do with it. But this tip isn't so bad. I read a little about it online and it doesn't seem that difficult. What about security updates?

The main computer I use is 64-bit. What is the best thing to do in this situation? Should I also rely on backported kernels or look for another Linux system, or will I unfortunately have to accept usrmerge at some point in the future?

Hmm ...
Disclaimer:
Mine is probably not the most authorised opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. 8^°

From my point of view, usrmerge is a clusterfuck.
I see it as totally unneeded and poorly thought out / unplanned.
But that is no surprise to anyone at this stage of the Debian game.

That said, it is what it is: Excalibur gets [clean] installed and [dist-upgraded] as a usrmerge'd system.

It will be some time till the maintainers of all the packages present in the Debian repositories catch up to this.
If they don't, their applications will most probably throw errors on installation and as a result, will not work or will not work properly.
Some maintainers may not even bother.

But there are much more important issues for Devuan to deal with and this usrmerge crap pales in comparison.

With respect to your specific situation, there is one (and only one) real problem for you to think about and it has a name: 32-bit
Why do you think you need to run Excalibur on your 32-bit machine?

My dear Asus 1000HE from ca. 2010 has been running on Devuan since mid 2019, first on ascii and then Beowulf with a backported kernel.
And it still has the XPSP3 partition I previously installed on it, just for experimental purposes.
I purchased it second hand with barely any use for a very good price.

Unless I come across a very good motive to upgrade it, it will stay exactly as it is.
The coffee roasting software I am running is the last 32-bit version published and support for it is non-existent.
I do not want to risk screwing it up.

Not something to ignore, by any means.
Maybe the gods are telling you something?

Do think about keeping Daedalus running in your rig, maybe with a backported kernel (ask here before) if you can be sure it will help you in any way. 

Like I said: with a grain of salt.

Best,

A.

If I stay under Daedalus and allow all non-free firmware, then no errors occur.
The system actually works quite well, despite the errors displayed.

@Altoid:

But if Daedalus is no longer supported, we'll all have to bite the bullet and switch to systems with usrmerge, right? Or are there still alternatives?

You may want to take a few moments to read de Debian advisory I previously linked to.

TL;DR:
If you want to avoid this usrmerge thing you will have to stay at Daedalus; the caveat being that it was not a fresh install.

buster = Beowulf
bullseye = Chimaera
bookworm = Daedalus

My Devuan box started off as Jesse and was dist-upgraded sequentially to ascii, Beowulf, etc. and then Daedalus, so it retained the now deprecated layout, but that ended with Excalibur.

To upgrade to Excalibur, I have to previously apply the usrmerge package from the Daedalus repository.

But ....
Should I want to go back to a system without usrmerge, I would have to use the last back-up image from my Clonezilla repository.
It would not be Devuan Excalibur.
Excalibur is a usrmerge'd installation, no way around that.

Best,

A.

The Sources.list is set to Daedalus.
Kernel is: 6.1.0-41-686

It still says you're missing non-free firmware. Do you know which firmware package you need? If you're going to use a devuan kernel, you can install the non-free stuff. If you use the libre kernel, you can't use the non-free stuff.

If the system doesn't work without the non-free stuff then you can't use the libre kernel.
If the system does work without the non-free stuff, you can ignore the warnings.

The error messages looked like this:

INIT: version 3.06 booting
INIT: No inittab.d directory found
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Starting hot-plug envents dispatcher: udevd.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (subsystem)...done.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (devices)...done.
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...[   14.954343] radeon: firmware: failed to load radeon/R520_cp.bin (-2)
[   14.954357] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
[   14.954300] radeon firmware: failed to load radeon/R520_cp.bin (-2)
[   14.954396] [drm:r100_cp_init.cold [radeon]] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware!
[   14.954557] radeon: failed initializing CP (-2)
[   14.954564] radeon: Disabling GPU acceleration
done.

I have now installed the Linux-libre kernel. I am still using Daedalus in Sources.list.
The kernel is: 6.12.58-gnu.

Now the error messages look like this:

INIT: version 3.06 booting
INIT: No inittab.d directory found
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Starting hot-plug envents dispatcher: udevd.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (subsystem)...done.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (devices)...done.
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...[   12.726339] Error: Driver ´pcspkr´ is already registered, aborting...
[   12.741657] Missing Free firmware (non-Free firmware loading is disabled)
[   12.741741] radeon_cp: Failed to load firmware "/*(DEBLOBBED)*/"
[   12.741748] [drm:r100_cp_init] [radeon]] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware!
[   12.741883] radeon: failed initializing CP (-2).
[   12.741891] radeon: Disabling GPU acceleration
done.

@Altoid:

Yes, I understand. I agree with you that usrmerge is just another step toward undermining the Linux system. First SystemD, then usrmerge, and then something else that will completely destroy Linux. I also read online that they introduced it so that SystemD would have even more control. It also destabilizes the system.
Unfortunately, the big companies dictate the standard, and other Linux systems adopt it and make it their standard, which is really sad. But who can resist these changes for long? Sooner or later, everyone will adopt these standards. What will we do then? Are there any alternative systems left that don't use usrmerge? There were more opponents of SystemD, but with usrmerge, everyone agrees. That's strange.

I respectfully beg to differ.

As it has become quite evident, there has been, is and will be (for the long run) an astounding amount of moolah behind the systemd putsch into the Linux ecosystem, the main objective being to infiltrate it, absorb the distribution that is arguably the major player within it and slowly but steadily proceed to morph it into a totally different OS, not much different than any other MS OS till it no longer has any resemblance to Linux as we know it.

That being the case*, I find it very difficult to think of usrmerge as just a control thing: it is just another part of the process towards their main goal.
* as always, YMMV

With those players, nothing is just anything more.
ie: everything they do has a definite purpose and is linked to everything else that has been done up to now.

Best,

A.

Other than that everything else seems to work.

The reality is a i686 system uses a lot less memory for some reason.

Someone thought it was a good idea to rearrange the deck chairs, even though we're all still sitting in them.

Wisdom and sigline material right there.

Not sure it was ever anything more than a control thing on their part.

Someone thought it was a good idea to rearrange the deck chairs, even though we're all still sitting in them.

Easy: from Trixie / Excalibur onwards it is mandatory as per Debian design.

Have a read here:
https://www.debian.org/releases/bookwor … w-required

* underlining is mine

Right ...
Now you know why it is the default and the bandwagon is full.  8^°

Best,

A.

@greenjeans

My laptop is an older AMD, and it will indeed run almost fine with free firmware as will most i've tried in Daedalus, but there are some small boot errors like yours and my machine will not suspend properly without the firmware-amd-graphics package.

In Excalibur in tests so far on my old lappy, it has worse errors if I don't have that firmware package as I couldn't get past lightdm without it.

But Excalibur is only available for 64-bit computers. Which kernel did you use on your old AMD laptop? Or did you manage to get Excalibur to run on 32-bit as well?

@fsmithred
Does the Linux-libre kernel require usrmerge? Do you know anything about this?
And: If I stick with Daedalus and install Linux-libre, and then try to upgrade to Excalibur without usrmerge, will it work?

Why is everyone suddenly switching to usrmerge? It reminds me of SystemD. Someone makes it the default and everyone jumps on the bandwagon.