Maybe soon, for real. I already know that amprolla3 works, because I tried it when it was on a test server. And I noticed today in #devuan-dev that a new devuan-keyring was being built. This is all just circumstantial evidence, but I'm hopeful.

I'm not aware of any problems with leaving ascii-proposed-updates enabled.

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1568

I don't know anything about arm or pi, but I have to ask: why does it need to be tar.gz? Do you need to install xz-utils to manipulate a file compressed with xz?

'xz -d <file>' to decompress
or
'tar -xvJf <file>' if it's a tar.xz.

I don't know where you're getting your information, but that bit is just plain wrong. The default desktop install includes libsystemd0. Devuan is about removing dependency on systemd itself. The lead devs are not concered with that library and don't intend to spend any energy on removing it.

While it took two years to get a final release of devuan jessie, it was usable long before that. A lot of the delay was just some loose ends to tie up. (Couple of problems came up in the installer.)

We don't expect the next release to take that long. If you test it out in a VM or on a spare computer or even one of the live isos, you'll feel like you're using the debian you remember.

Could be a trick question, so I'll give the trick answer first - Devuan didn't use any compile options. Now I'll explain.

Caja is not a devuanized package. You can tell by looking at the version number, which does not have "devuan" appended to it. So it's exactly the same package that debian provides. The compile options can be found in the rules file of the source package, and you can get the source package with the command (as unprivileged user)

apt-get source caja

(Make sure you have deb-src lines enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list)

There are good instruction for what to do with that source package here -
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=38976

If you do it this way and make a .deb package, then the package manager will know that it's installed. That might be helpful with getting dependencies or if you ever want to install something that depends on caja.

What new installer of Debian are you talking about? I just booted a new 9.1 debian netinstall iso, and it looks like the same debian-installer that I'm used to. I did notice that the graphical installer needs more than 256mb to boot, but other than that, it looks the same.

Are you looking for this? (Note: if you look around in nearby directories, you can find the mini.iso "business card iso")
https://packages.devuan.org/merged/dist … /hd-media/

If you use one of the Devuan live isos, you can install with refractainstaller, which copies the live system to hard drive.

It's also possible to do a debootstrap install of devuan. You can use a Refracta live-iso for that if you don't already have devuan installed.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … isohybrid/

You could use refracta tools to create a bootable, installable live-iso of your system with your configs and software choices. If things change, you would need to create a new iso (not difficult) or an alternative would be to make a live-usb with persistence, boot it on another computer, and then rsync the changes to the usb system. The alternative is more complex, but once you have it set up, it's easy.

refractasnapshot to make a live iso of your system.
refractainstaller to install that system to hard drive if you need to restore.
refracta2usb to make a live-usb with persistence.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/tools/
http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta/documents.html

Important note: You may need to edit the excludes file so you don't copy all your data. There's a 4gb limit on the iso size.

Yes, X has been running as root forever, and that only changed with stretch. I don't know the details of how systemd works with that, but the dependence of xorg on systemd also appeared with stretch. According to the linked video, the solution is to switch to wayland. (That's an over-simplified explanation. In fact, a lot of bugs have been fixed as a result of  that guy's work.)

apt-get remove xdm
echo "needs_root_rights=yes" >> /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

Then use startx.

No, not like antix, which has less systemd in it than devuan has. More like debian, which is what galpon is. (jessie with liquorix 4.6 kernel)

ls -l /sbin/init

shows that it's a symlink to /lib/systemd/systemd.