Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

Morty · 2023-07-11 11:54:45

Hi! I am a new to Devuan and am used to systemd-distros like Debian and OpenSuse. I am planning to use Daedalus on my Desktop PC when its ready. But i have a few questions about Devuan Daedalus as Desktop OS.

1. "dnscrypt-proxy is on the banned packages list" (https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/bannedpackages.txt). Does this mean i cant use it with devuan/SysVinit?
What is the status of dnscrypt-proxy in Devuan Daedalus? Is it usable or are there better alternatives you recommend?

2. The Package "Cockpit" is also on the banned list. Looks like Webmin is one of the alternatives that support Devuan. Do you know of other alternatives that i can use to graphically configure my System Settings and read my Logfiles in?
On OpenSuse and Debian i am used to graphical tools like "cockpit" and "YaST".

3. Are there any GUI tools to manage SysVinit and read the logfiles?

4. how about these "dbus", "polkit", and "udisks" packages? Looks like they are blacklisted too. Are they really needed for a working Desktop? I remember that KDE Desktop (and maybe even Steam?) on other distros depend on them. How is it in Devuan?

5. I use the KDE-Desktop on Wayland, NetworkManager, and Steam client for games. Do they work on Devuan? Do i need PulseAudio or PipeWire for these?

6. How about VPN? I use OpenVPN, Wireguard and AirVPN. Do they work on Devuan? OpenVPN is blacklisted.

Last edited by Morty (2023-07-11 12:33:49)

boughtonp · 2023-07-11 12:19:59

Morty wrote:

"dnscrypt-proxy is on the banned packages list"

No it isn't. The text file can be a bit confusing to read:

https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/bannedpackages.txt wrote:

dnscrypt-proxy.[d1src:dnscrypt-proxy]...............................................|..........4........................................

As per the key at the start of the file, that 4 indicates "4 = beowulf-security", and the lack of any other numbers/letters to the right of the "|" means that's the only repo it's blacklisted from.

Presumably there was a previous issue that is now resolved; it's not banned for current stable Chimaera, nor for upcoming-but-not-yet-released Daedalus.

Last edited by boughtonp (2023-07-11 12:22:12)

rolfie · 2023-07-11 18:15:31

When you install Daedalus with KDE, you will get a working system. No need to fumble, the installation takes care for replacements for the banned packages. Well, I am not a KDE user, but I have tried once Devuan/KDE in a VM, works.
I am not aware about any GUI tool to manage sysvinit, what for? Its set during the installation, and normally you do not need to change anything.
On Mate/Cinnamon you get a log file viewer as GUI tool. I would assume something like that is also available for KDE.
I have installed PA on my workstation, my laptop is using pipewire. Both do the job.

Marjorie · 2023-07-11 22:37:21

I upgraded to Daedalus two day ago.

I use dnscrypt-proxy. It was previously running on Chimaera.

The package version installed and running is 2.0.45+ds1-1+devuan1

So clearly a Devuan compliant version.

There are a number of packages in Debian that have had to be modified to run without systemd. I assume that this is one of them.

Last edited by Marjorie (2023-07-11 22:42:03)

boughtonp · 2023-07-12 13:12:14

Worth adding that one can search for any package at https://pkginfo.devuan.org to confirm which repos it exists in.

If there are Devuan-specific patches then the version string will include "devuan" (suffixed by a number, and possibly prefixed by "+" or "-" or "~"), and also the "Filename" field on info page will start with "pool/DEVUAN/" instead of "pool/DEBIAN/".

To discover what the changes are, goto https://git.devuan.org/explore/repos and search for the package name.

Morty · 2023-07-13 20:32:17

rolfie wrote:

I am not aware about any GUI tool to manage sysvinit, what for? Its set during the installation, and normally you do not need to change anything.
On Mate/Cinnamon you get a log file viewer as GUI tool. I would assume something like that is also available for KDE.
I have installed PA on my workstation, my laptop is using pipewire. Both do the job.

Really cool. Do you know if i can use KDE Desktop, Firefox and Steam without PA or Pipewire? Alsa only?

I would need a GUI for SysVinit to show, start/stop services. Maybe even read some logs if a service fails.

fsmithred · 2023-07-13 21:58:28

I would need a GUI for SysVinit to show, start/stop services. Maybe even read some logs if a service fails.

Install sysv-rc-conf and run it (as root) in a terminal. Arrow keys to navigate, space bar to select/unselect and q to quit.

And while you're in that root terminal...

less /var/log/syslog

tylerdurden · 2023-07-14 00:41:48

Morty wrote:

Hi! I am a new to Devuan and am used to systemd-distros like Debian and OpenSuse. I am planning to use Daedalus on my Desktop PC when its ready. But i have a few questions about Devuan Daedalus as Desktop OS.

Glad to see you're looking into Devuan! I'd recommend testing stuff on a spare machine or in a VM. For convenience, perhaps just do a standard installation and select KDE or run tasksel after a minimal installation, then select KDE.

If you want a more minimal and less bloated KDE experience, though, you could do this:

sudo apt-get install -y \
     ark \
     gwenview \
     kcalc \
     kcolorchooser \
     kde-plasma-desktop \
     kde-spectacle \
     ksnip \
     okular \
     okular-extra-backends \
     plasma-nm \
     qbittorrent \
     qt5-style-kvantum \
     sddm-theme-debian-breeze

Note that plasma-nm is the NetworkManager applet for KDE.

Perhaps you may also want to consider doing this if you want to get rid of services like kdeconnect and avahi running in the background:

sudo apt purge kdeconnect avahi-daemon

Change according to your needs.

As for your questions:

1. dnscrypt-proxy is available from the repositories with apt-get but I don't use it.
2. cockpit is available from the repositories with apt-get but I don't use it.
3. See @fsmithred's suggestions. Note that you can also use openrc or even runit.
4. dbus, polkit, udisks are available. By default, Devuan uses elogind as a session manager for compatibility, which was extracted from systemd. Suspend on lid close, suspend-to-disk (hibernation), suspend-to-RAM (suspend/sleep) work out of the box, with elogind installed. Not so with seatd in my experience but that's probably the least of your concerns right now.
5. NetworkManager is installed by default. Personally I don't use it anymore but you sure can if you want to. Can't comment on Steam or Wayland since I don't use those. Not sure about the default audio backend on KDE with Daedalus but you can change that in the KDE settings if necessary so that shouldn't be a problem.
6. OpenVPN works just fine. Zero issues in my experience. Can't comment on wireguard. Since you're planning on using NetworkManager, you can install network-manager-openvpn-gnome and you'll be able to import OpenVPN config files using NetworkManager (don't worry about the name, it won't pull in Gnome).

I used KDE on Devuan for a while and it worked fine for me. I only stopped using it because I find KDE a bit, well, "much". I prefer a more minimal setup these days. I either use a bare bones XFCE or IceWM. At any rate, KDE works fine on Devuan in my experience.

Good luck!

Last edited by tylerdurden (2023-07-14 00:49:10)

boughtonp · 2023-07-14 15:58:55

tylerdurden wrote:

2. cockpit is available from the repositories with apt-get but I don't use it.

What specific command are you running and what output are you receiving?

Cockpit is a Red Hat project, and thus has been deeply entangled with systemd, and is not available in Daedalus repos:

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cockpit

tylerdurden · 2023-07-15 01:10:37

boughtonp wrote:

tylerdurden wrote:
2. cockpit is available from the repositories with apt-get but I don't use it.
What specific command are you running and what output are you receiving?

I ran apt search cockpit in a VM running Daedalus (RC4) which gave me a list of various packages seemingly related to Cockpit.

One of those packages is cockpit-system. If you run apt info cockpit-system you'll find the following description:

Description: Cockpit admin interface for a system
 Cockpit admin interface package for configuring and
 troubleshooting a system.

A dry run on a Chimaera system produces the following output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  cockpit-bridge libpwquality-tools
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  cockpit-bridge cockpit-system libpwquality-tools
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Inst cockpit-bridge (239-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [amd64])
Inst libpwquality-tools (1.4.4-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [amd64])
Inst cockpit-system (239-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [all])
Conf cockpit-bridge (239-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [amd64])
Conf libpwquality-tools (1.4.4-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [amd64])
Conf cockpit-system (239-1 Devuan:4.0/stable [all])

You're right that there's no package named cockpit, though.

Last edited by tylerdurden (2023-07-15 01:12:44)

boughtonp · 2023-07-15 12:22:11

Ah ok, so it has some of the packages but not all of them - cockpit-system is the dashboard/frontend (basically a bunch of HTML/JS).

The cockpit package is the top-level package, and it's blocked in Devuan because it depends on cockpit-ws which depends on systemd:

cockpit
cockpit-bridge
cockpit-system
cockpit-ws
systemd

The cockpit-ws package contains login/authentication code, so even with the backend server (cockpit-bridge) and the UI, it presumably wont work without that.

Last edited by boughtonp (2023-07-15 12:22:41)

tylerdurden · 2023-07-15 13:04:24

boughtonp wrote:

Ah ok, so it has some of the packages but not all of them - cockpit-system is the dashboard/frontend (basically a bunch of HTML/JS).

Thanks for pointing that out! My mistake. I should have been a bit more careful when I said it's available.

At any rate I hope this helps OP.

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#1 2023-07-11 11:54:45

Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#2 2023-07-11 12:19:59

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#3 2023-07-11 18:15:31

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#4 2023-07-11 22:37:21

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#5 2023-07-12 13:12:14

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#6 2023-07-13 20:32:17

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#7 2023-07-13 21:58:28

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#8 2023-07-14 00:41:48

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#9 2023-07-14 15:58:55

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#10 2023-07-15 01:10:37

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#11 2023-07-15 12:22:11

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

#12 2023-07-15 13:04:24

Re: Some Newbie Questions about Devuan on Desktop

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