The officially official Devuan Forum!

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Why Fie?

Honestly . . . seriously cheesed-off.

I installed Devuan on a 64-bit laptop that I had had Xubuntu on for about a year and felt like a change.

1. Ancient installer that looked like a bad DOS knock-off.

2. Took ages.

3. Worked with my WiFi during install.

4. Post install couldn't see my WiFi: "Help" gave me a long-winded recipe
with a LAN cable and terminal commands.

Back to Xubuntu.

I expect a modern OS to have a graphic installer and to be able to detect my WiFi card.

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 282  

Re: Why Fie?

Bye then.

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 435  

Re: Why Fie?

Ha, ha, these youngsters, need everything spoon fed.....only had to open the menu to set up the wifi....

PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 268  

Website

Re: Why Fie?

seriously cheesed-off.

There are zillions of free OSs. It is all about freedom. Pick the one best fit to you, no problem. But we prefer constructive criticism here.

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

Well, here are 2 spots of constructive criticism:

1. How about offering a graphical installer as an option?

2. How about setting the system up so as soon as it is installed it can detect WiFi?

It all depends on how one phrases things.

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

"Bye then."

Far from it; intend to return just as soon as . . . 

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

"Ha, ha, these youngsters, need everything spoon fed.....only had to open the menu to set up the wifi...."

Well, I suppose at 58 I might count as a youngster if everyone else hereabouts is 135.

"open the menu" would have been jolly nice, except the menu could not find my WiFi at all, which is odd because neither could PureOS
while Ubuntu flavours can.

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: Why Fie?

another cranky old boomer lol.

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,249  

Re: Why Fie?

Hey, friends; no need to get defensive and personal when the OP has taken the trouble of putting their mind to articulating how their experience differed from their expectation. Be positive: the OP wants to help.

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: Why Fie?

Yeah sorry, that is fair enough ralph.

1. i was surprised there was no gui installer, but im used to cli/tui/dialog installers having installed via these more than twice.

2. Installation is a bit lengthy depending on the network, i used a local mirror and it seemed to help a bit.

3. never used wifi for installation as it required non-free firmware and i use internet over usb0 from the smartphone anyhow.

Stick with devuan richmond62, its a good system for us boomers

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,161  

Re: Why Fie?

@ralph.ronquist: thanks for intervening. I am a few years older even than the OP....

@OP: Yes, a GUI installer could be a bit more comfortable in some areas. ASCII as the previous release had one, and Debian also has it. But you need to understand that Devuan is run with a very small team of developers, and its simply lack of resource that the GUI was dropped for Beowulf. And I can support the decision to drop the GUI installer, its more important to get the release rolling.

The firmware issues are also due to Debian/Devuan philosophy. A lot of firmware is propriatry stuff in non-free, you have to enable it. You will need to get acustomed to that speciality.

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2020-06-07 13:12:09)

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 435  

Re: Why Fie?

Well, I suppose at 58 I might count as a youngster if everyone else hereabouts is 135.

"open the menu" would have been jolly nice, except the menu could not find my WiFi at all, which is odd because neither could PureOS
while Ubuntu flavours can.

Yeah, but we don't need to be 135 - I'm just a cranky 70 year old.

That's the problem you'll often find, especially with non free drivers, (as stated above), most distros just include the 'usual' ones.

Try running, in a terminal,

dmesg | grep wifi

(you may need to use sudo),
that should tell you the necessary driver firmware to be able to get your wifi running.

P.S. Other distros you may find worth looking at are MX linux & AntiX, usually have enough drivers for most equipment.

Last edited by Camtaf (2020-06-07 14:30:04)

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 435  

Re: Why Fie?

Hey, friends; no need to get defensive and personal when the OP has taken the trouble of putting their mind to articulating how their experience differed from their expectation. Be positive: the OP wants to help.

Back to Xubuntu.

I expect a modern OS to have a graphic installer and to be able to detect my WiFi card.

Seemed more like a rant, than asking for help - but you're right, I should have just passed by - apologies.

PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 268  

Website

Re: Why Fie?

Be positive: the OP wants to help.

Ageed. My bad. Sorry.

Sometimes I dont find the right wording. In these cases, I should not talk.

Expert pure text install is a blessing for me. It (almost) always works.

I dont expect that everything works out of the box. IMHO is not a problem picking a WiFi spot.

Anyway: I'm sorry.

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,311  

Re: Why Fie?

Be positive: the OP wants to help.

I'm not so sure about that.  But sometimes best just to ignore such rants an move on.  The OP has the right to relinquish as much freedom as (s)he chooses.

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richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

"Stick with devuan richmond62, its a good system for us boomers"

I'll just collect a LAN cable from my ever-growing pile of out-dated cr*p when I visit our flat in the town tomorrow.

(currently hiding from viruses with my wife in the Bulgarian mountains).

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

"Seemed more like a rant, than asking for help"

Ha, Ha, Ha; as my wife will tell you: when you see me rant you'll know what a rant really is. 

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

I have been using varieties of Linux on a wide variety of machines for about 17 years now.

My EFL school here in Bulgaria features 8 machines, none of which is younger than 15 years,
which run 32-bit Xubuntu 18.04 and have been gaily serving my home-grown applications for what is pompously called
"Subject reinforcement and delivery", or, on a cruder level, "Give Richmond a 20 minute break during a 90 minute session so he can have a good glug of coffee."

I deploy other distros on various machines I use for my Summer Programming short courses.

Obviously I started 17 years ago with the type of installer that I saw with Devuan 3, but have come to
expect a graphic 'thang': I suppose I am spoilt.

richmond62

Member

Registered: 2020-06-07

Posts: 8  

Re: Why Fie?

The "OP" (that's me) wants:

1. To help.

2. To be helped.

Consider the following . . .

All the kids who attend my language school, and their parents, are well aware that I use almost exclusively Linux
in my work (this, at one of my homes, is a Macintosh computer), and I have advised quite a few parents on
"re-tooling" their factories' computers after they finally work out how expensive and time-consuming running
Windows is. I have also set up any number of laptops with Linux for richer kids, charging them so I can buy
2 year old desktops to install Linux on and give out for free for the poorer kids.

This works in terms of propagating Linux.

Now I have gone down the Greek path (MX-Linux) and regretted it.

I am beginning to see that Ubuntu and its derivatives lead to a sort of mental laziness with kids because
they, wrongly, assume it "just works" without any effort on their part. From a pedagogical point of view
that is not a message I want to send out.

So . . . .

Last edited by richmond62 (2020-06-07 17:58:18)

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,311  

Re: Why Fie?

Just for the record.  I have no mobile devices  and all my devices are wired.  I have not yet found a need for wifi which simplifies my life greatly (after it's hooked up).

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fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,481  

Re: Why Fie?

Welcome to Devuan.

You've been around linux long enough to see that every release gets bigger and more hungry for resources. Part of the reason we left the graphical installer out of the installer isos was to leave more room for applications that might be needed when installing without a network connection.

If you've used graphical installers on other distros, you might be disappointed with the debian-installer's rendition. The ncurses variety that you saw is actually easier to use - it requires less motion.

You can see for yourself. There's a graphical installer in the mini.iso on this page.
https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dis … tboot/gtk/

The mini.isos get made when the installer gets rebuilt. They're mainly for testing, and they require a wired network connection to get even the most minimal working system.

The live isos use a different installer that just copies the system from the media to the hard drive. It takes about 10 minutes, but you don't get to choose the software.

.

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 435  

Re: Why Fie?

The old OpenBSD installer was the worst that I had come across - it was curses based & used to make you use cylinders, & you had too keep count of where you were too.

So, OP, you've been using Linux almost as long as I have......each distro does things their own way, so you shouldn't really complain about one that chooses to use curses installers, it's up to the devs what they want to use, we get the privilege of using their hard work for free.

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: Why Fie?

The old OpenBSD installer was the worst that I had come across - it was curses based & used to make you use cylinders, & you had too keep count of where you were too.

So, OP, you've been using Linux almost as long as I have......each distro does things their own way, so you shouldn't really complain about one that chooses to use curses installers, it's up to the devs what they want to use, we get the privilege of using their hard work for free.

If you are used to linux, openbsd is a whole different ball game when it comes to disk management. Being only relatively new to BSD i could imagine earlier implementations would have tested ones patience.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-06-08 14:58:36)

ToxicExMachina

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 210  

Re: Why Fie?

Well, here are 2 spots of constructive criticism:

1. How about offering a graphical installer as an option?

2. How about setting the system up so as soon as it is installed it can detect WiFi?

I don't know what you have installed. Devuan has both of features you mentioned in the comment.

Last edited by ToxicExMachina (2020-07-06 09:49:57)

Tatwi

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2018-10-24

Posts: 72  

Website

Re: Why Fie?

Technically the refractra based installer that is included on the Live DVD/USB Image is a GUI based installer, though it is terrible/confusing compared to the Ubuntu/Mint GUI installer.

When starting the Debian/Devuan normal installer (full or net-install), there is an option for "Graphical Installer", which is functionally identical to the NCurses "DOS knockoff", but it looks prettier. Functionally, this installer is perfectly fine and visually the graphical version is also fine. Every step is clear and well documented and it's not possible to reach the end of the installer without having a working system.

Wifi doesn't work? Yeah, welcome to the difference between using Debian rather than Ubuntu: Debian has always been and still is a chore to configure, which is the whole reason distros like Ubuntu exist. Devuan is Debian without Systemd, not Ubuntu without Systemd.

Ps. I've been using Linux since 1998. In all that time, I would say that Mint 17.3 XFCE was the pinnacle of Linux for me, because it was a normal GNU/Linux system that "just worked". Sadly Mint 17 is no longer supported and it doesn't work on my new laptop, so I have reluctantly moved on. Devuan being Debian and Debian being what it is, it has taken me a few weeks to configure Devuan 3 to function essentially the same as my old favorite Mint 17. For me, a person who used to use plain old Debian before he used Mint 17, it was an effort I didn't mind undertaking. I certainly appreciate (and prefer!) the "it just works" mindset, but new versions of Mint use Systemd and I'd rather not, so I really don't have a problem stepping back into a base Debian system and configuring it myself. For me it's worth the effort, but I can completely understand how it may not be worth the effort to someone else.

Last edited by Tatwi (2020-07-06 11:50:00)