The officially official Devuan Forum!

yaser

Member

Registered: 2026-04-25

Posts: 8  

[SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

Hi everybody,

I've decided to move out of my comfort zone because corporate Linux dramas reached a level I can't take anymore!
I read about multiple options without systemd, and decided to go with Devuan (mostly because of the chill and welcoming community).

Long story short:

- As a I am new here, what init system do you recommend? I saw dinit is super fast, but it's not available here.
- I think going with Xfce + xlibre would be nice, but I'm open to recommendations for other setups that might work better for a former GNOME user.
- Is there any benefit to using btrfs here, or should I just stick with ext4?

Finally,
I was using podman and podman quadlets a lot. I know quadlet can't be used anymore, so do you recommend Docker?

Thanks for sharing your experience.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,455  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

welcome to Devuan.

I am nowadays on the default: sysvinit. I have tried openrc too, but I did not see any advantages. My current PC system is about 5 years old, so fast enough.

As an original Gnome2 user 10-15 years ago, I have initially used Mate for a while, but have switched to Cinnamon now. I never could make friends with Gnome3 and later, also neither XFCE nor KDE is one of my favorites. I have tried xlibre with Excalibur in a VM, looks good there, but daily driver still is X11.

ext4 is a rockstable file system most people use. btrfs is the same as in Debian. I my eyes only recommended for the very experienced user. Has a small user base.

Anyhow: Devuan is Debian w/o systemd. There have been some threads lately going a bit more into detail. If you are interested, use the forum search.

yaser

Member

Registered: 2026-04-25

Posts: 8  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

So just a default installation would be good to go.
I forgot about cinnamon, that might be more feature rich
thanks to mention it.

i am exploring forum actually, biggest question for me is still which init should i pick, for example i saw some posts on using tailscale and it look likes openrc maybe has a better support for this kinda not supported stuff. i know i am overthinking this...

Ron

Member

Registered: 2018-04-22

Posts: 610  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

I'd go with OpenRC and ext4. But that's just me.

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 1,656  

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

I'd have to recommend for a first time user, that you start off with the default Sysvinit and use ext4, it's simple and well-tested and almost boringly stable, i've beaten and hacked on it 9 ways from Tuesday and still it just hums along all day, and on very old equipment too.

---

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Please donate to support Devuan and init freedom! https://devuan.org/os/donate
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yaser

Member

Registered: 2026-04-25

Posts: 8  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

I'll go with ext4 and openrc (tailscale still has issues with sysv)
for desktop i downloaded 4G desktop iso to mess around with cinnamon and others.
docker and xlibre are well documented too.

Thank you guys, couldn't make decision without you and a lot of other solved posts on the forum.

rbit

Member

Registered: 2018-06-12

Posts: 126  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

I don't use tailscale myself, but was trying to help a friend who is on excalibur.  I pointed him to https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/9502 and he was able to get it working (with sysvinit).  There's a sample init script (or two) down in the thread.  I'm not sure exactly what he went with.

yaser

Member

Registered: 2026-04-25

Posts: 8  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

i saw that github issue but i thought no one managed to use those scripts, good to know.
going to test it on a vm and share results here.

kajko

Member

Registered: 2026-05-01

Posts: 3  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

Hi yaser,
I use almost everything what you need:
runit
xlibre
DM: i3
FS: LVM+ DM-CRYPT + BTRFS
Virtualization: incus
for VPN: Mullvad
As tailscale replacement I highly recommend Nebula from Slack: https://nebula.defined.net/docs/

yaser

Member

Registered: 2026-04-25

Posts: 8  

Re: [SOLVED] Shift from Silverblue to Devuan

Hi @kajko
thanks for sharing your setup, actually i got so close to this.

it took me some time but i tested various setups and the biggest one was escaping years of using gnome!

First Install: Failure

- sysvinit: very simple and fast
- xorg: just works
- fs: standard ext4
- vm: qemu + virtmanager
- tailscale: failed, tho with a wrapper script i could use it.
- xfce: feels like winxp but very customizable (last only 1 week!)
- i3: getting use to tilling + insane amount of newbie ricing! + testing almost any wm on the planet.
- dev: docker + ddev + bloated vscode

==> i messed up thing by upgrading to ceres branch
but learned alot and took tons of hand writings!

Second Install: current

- installation: installed a minimum base + xorg + pipewire (later on installed xlibre)
- openrc: i miss sysv but at least tailscale works perfect
- dm: bspwm + polybar
- fs: ext4 + swap (noatime)
- vm: incus
- dev: neovim + lampp

sadly I didn't know about Nebula (thanks for recommending) tail was only reason i chose openrc. no issue so far. we will see, i will update if i fail again