NatWest were introducing apps for mobile phones when I moved my accounts to VM. My current service with VM is essentially identical to what I had with NatWest except that VM pay interest on +ve bank balances and Cash ISA (NatWest pay 0% on both). And the VM debit card is prettier (bright red) than the NatWest one.

My desire was simply to be able to do basic admin on my accounts from my desktop. I'm happy with a mobile to phone, take pictures & videos + text messages. But I will not add money to it.

What pleases me with Linux is the dedication to security, shown by the virtually daily updates plus the attitude of the opensource movement. That means that Devuan is a system that people can trust.

A mobile phone OS is a means to line the pockets of the proprietors that own it, and users are just their glove-puppets. Thus, I treat mobiles as something that I value but use at the end of a barge-pole supplemented with a clothes-peg (for my nose).

My actions with VM were gesture politics more than anything else. I did not expect much more than what happened, but if you do not try then nothing will change.

It has been very interesting to read folk's responses, and I thank you for that. Just maybe someone will waft these messages under the eyes of a VM executive that can make a difference and cause a desktop app to be written. It would be trivially easy to implement cp to a mobile app, and a damn sight more secure.

I'll take your advice under advisement, Ron, until I receive further confirmation.

NatWest was the first bank I met (or National Westminster Bank, as it was then in 1967 when I was 18), and all the banks that I have met then & since have been stupid beyond any reasonable excuse. I left NatWest because they have ceased to pay interest on positive balances. VM *do* pay interest, even if not much.

Indeed it has, and it works. This post is written under Chromium (hurrah!):

$ ~/.local/sbin/update
Hit:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur InRelease
Get:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-updates InRelease [37.6 kB]
Get:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security InRelease [37.9 kB]
Get:4 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security/main amd64 Packages [228 kB]
Fetched 304 kB in 1s (261 kB/s)   
4 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
Summary:                        
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 4
Upgrading:                      
  chromium  chromium-common  chromium-l10n  chromium-sandbox

Summary:
  Upgrading: 4, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0
  Download size: 123 MB
  Space needed: 0 B / 57.3 GB available

Continue? [Y/n] Y
Get:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security/main amd64 chromium-l10n all 150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1 [8,891 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security/main amd64 chromium amd64 150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1 [87.2 MB]
Get:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security/main amd64 chromium-common amd64 150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1 [26.6 MB]
Get:4 http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security/main amd64 chromium-sandbox amd64 150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1 [131 kB]
Fetched 123 MB in 11s (10.9 MB/s)                                              
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 265613 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../chromium-l10n_150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1_all.deb ...
Unpacking chromium-l10n (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) over (150.0.7871.46-1~deb13u1
) ...
Preparing to unpack .../chromium_150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking chromium (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) over (150.0.7871.46-1~deb13u1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../chromium-common_150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking chromium-common (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) over (150.0.7871.46-1~deb13
u1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../chromium-sandbox_150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking chromium-sandbox (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) over (150.0.7871.46-1~deb1
3u1) ...
Setting up chromium-sandbox (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) ...
Setting up chromium-common (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) ...
Setting up chromium (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) ...
Setting up chromium-l10n (150.0.7871.100-1~deb13u1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.28-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.18-2) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.41-12+deb13u3) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1) ...
Processing triggers for mailcap (3.74) ...
$ la /usr/bin/chromium
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5064 Jul  7 18:47 /usr/bin/chromium

My description of Gnome as "bloated" appears to have triggered some folks. I do not have a dog in that fight, although I *have* sometimes been surprised at the number of dependencies that will get pulled in if I install something connected to Gnome.

To try to shed some light on this I searched DDG for Is Gnome bloated. The answer appears to be 'yes':

I am happy to leave others more qualified than me to scrap over the reasonableness of the statement.

I've got the following in colour-versions, but this forum cannot show it, so here is plain text.

This is a comparison between my new Byte3 (5 inches square, which is just over 12 cm, and 4 cm high) using neowofetch, and my 10-year-old Lenevo (16 x 4 inches and 12 inches high) using neowatch (latter is no longer in excaliber/Debian-13 as no longer supported):

The byte3:

alexk@star 
---------- 
OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 13.2 (excalibur) x86_64 
Host: Byte 1.0 
Kernel: 6.12.57+deb13-amd64 
Uptime: 1 hour, 4 mins 
Packages: 1570 (dpkg) 
Shell: bash 5.2.37 
Resolution: 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz 
DE: Xfce 4.20 (x11) 
WM: Xfwm4 
WM Theme: Default 
Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-Sapphire [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Deepsea [GTK2/3] 
Cursor: DMZ-White [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
Terminal Font: Monospace 12 
CPU: Intel 3 N355 (8) @ 3.9GHz 
GPU: Intel Graphics] 
Memory: 1.60 GiB / 31.19 GiB (5%) 
Network: 1 Gbps 
BIOS: coreboot 0.0 (12/04/2025) 

The Lenovo:

alexk@ng3 
--------- 
OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur) x86_64 
Model: 90BJ008CUK Lenovo H30-05 
Kernel: 6.12.57+deb13-amd64 
Uptime: 4 days, 17 hours, 47 mins 
Packages: 3240 (dpkg) 
Shell: bash 5.2.37 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: Xfce 4.20 
WM: Xfwm4 
WM Theme: Default 
Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-Sapphire [GTK2/3] 
Icons: oxygen [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
Terminal Font: Monospace 12 
CPU: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics (4) @ 2.200GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon R4/R5 Graphics 
Memory: 2438MiB / 7362MiB

The byte is so fast that I want to move to it as soon as I can. As always, it is setup that takes the time, but I'm almost there. Installing GBs of Thunderbird's profile will be the final act, and I'll go.

hth

I used devuan_excalibur_6.1.0_amd64_netinstall.iso obtained from the devuan excaliber download page. Then dd to setup a 2GB USB stick (wildly oversized; the iso is only 593MB).

sudo dd if=devuan_excalibur_6.1.0_amd64_netinstall.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=1M && sync

My existing screen has a HDMI option, so that was plugged into the Byte, as were an aged Dell keyboard via USB, mouse via USB, a LAN connection to my Virgin Media cable box, the external 18v power via DC jack + the USB stick.

Setup was a doddle:

The first issue was to spot the console warning to access the BIOS at startup. It was "F2", but that was on-screen for a very brief time.

Inside the BIOS it was easy to spot 'choose boot disk', with the internal 2TB SSD or the USB as options after that choice. Choosing 'USB' and 'reboot', everything occurred at astonishing speed afterwards.

My existing box is 10 years old, and one of the main reasons for getting a replacement is the gigabit LAN in the new one. Virgin have upgraded their Cable to an astonishing speed, but the old box was 10/100 LAN & that was the max it could handle. The new box is tiny outside but has 10 x the speed & capacity of the old one.

I was impressed by the intelligence of the setup in the ISO. It spotted my GB location & all the options for LAN setup (lan, wlan + bluetooth). The defaults for disk setup were also intelligent.

Finally, if you have not yet spotted it, only the intelligence of me & the Devuan page is lacking. I'm an ex-internet professional + server admin and yet was flummoxed by "amd64" as the supported architecture.

The Star-Labs Byte3 is working fine with Devuan. My main problem now is the amount of time that it is going to take me to set it up to my liking, so that I can drag myself away from the old box.

[added later]:

Here is my sources.list for Excaliber:

$ grep ^[^#] /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur                 main non-free-firmware non-free contrib
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-updates         main non-free-firmware non-free contrib
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged excalibur-security        main non-free-firmware non-free contrib

hth

And Dev1palaxy.org finally hits spam central. Been expecting it from all the noise recently.

Interim update:

Synopsis:

The ODT load on a 600 page document has become so high as to freeze LibreOffice and, on a couple of occasions, also freeze Devuan solid.

$ lscpu | fgrep 'Model name'
Model name:                           AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics

Work is in process to reduce that load.

The following has been completed:

1. All Direct Paragraph Style have been changed for other styles (mostly Text Body)
   [note: in 24.8 “Text Body” has been renamed to “Body Text”]

2. Each Heading x style (levels 1, 2, 3 + 4) contains a Text-Box (TB) at the far-right as an extra visual clue. Each TB has been swapped out for a Frame
   [styles: H1Frame, H2Frame, H3Frame + H4Frame]

The following is still in process:

• DrawObjects are being swapped out for PNG images

• Several hundred Direct Formats with a FreeMono font are being swapped out with a self-created “Console” Character Style
  [the original PDF described this style as “Lightface”]

Bug-Traces

Just like slugs, Bugs leave sure-fire notice of their existence.

1. On document load the page count (Status Bar at bottom left) would vary wildly from moment-to-moment

2. The DrawObjects would move location, often across pages as well as within them, and that could also be within the page header or footer. From observation I believe that it may be this latter that caused the freeze-ups.

3. (added 20 Nov) Images + Tables would also move location through the text from their original place.

4. (added 20 Nov) In the Navigator (F5) Tables, Images, DrawObjects, etc.would be listed out-of-order from their position in the text-flow

Under 7.4.7.2 it currently takes 14 seconds after document load for the system load to fall from 30% to a trivial level. Before the changes above it *never* fell below 30%.

(added 20 Nov): After vast amounts of work to create "Proper" styling, a freshly-loaded document takes 10 seconds before the load falls below 30% (an extra 4 seconds saved on earlier work)

There is one main route that requires a reboot, and that is following install of a new kernel. The kernel will need installing at bootup (the only time it gets installed) and the process to that requires an initramfs, which makes a setup from RAM & at the end loads the kernel, etc., etc. initramfs is always specific to a specific kernel.
Here is some user-level info on the setup device:

dpkg -l initramfs-toolss
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name            Version       Architecture Description
+++-===============-=============-============-================================>
ii  initramfs-tools 0.142+deb12u1 all          generic modular initramfs genera

This sorry tale continues.

To re-iterate: somewhere within a 600 page Writer ODT is *something* that has triggered a weird bug.

A long-time expert on the ask.libreoffice.org website fingered my use of "Default Paragraph Style" as one source for system slowdown (should be "Text Body" / "Body Text" instead). I set out to change every one of the thousands of 'ordinary' (not indented, or list, etc) Default-paragraphs to Text Body-paragraphs. Having got almost halfway through those manual changes, I have:

1. Discovered that LO-7.6.7.2 allowed access to edit + save the odt, although the system was at 30% load throughout

2. Changing the 43 paragraphs in the 'Introduction' / save / re-open caused all the excess load to go away

3. Restarting LibreOffice (after no further changes) the load was back

4. Reaching page 113 of 599 with edits the excess load goes away again.

5. Simply restarting LibreOffice (no further changes) and the load is back.

6. Restarting computer then LibreOffice at page 233, after changing 3 paragraphs LibreOffice freezes & has to be dismissed with prejudice (ps aux | fgrep -i libreoffice then kill -9 4112 4171).

7. At some page before this LibreOffice froze so hard that the entire computer system also froze; it required Ctrl+Alt+F1 (go to the command-line) | login | startx | restart computer)

I can't take much more of this.