freia desktop-live test iso

fsmithred · 2026-10-31 17:50:27

Take it for a test drive to see if anything is broken.
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_freia/d … p-live.iso

sha256sum:

8f1547575ac66468ac8f9f30fc95167ac6b5d84d484ce89c44456545a616d856

Andre4freedom · Yesterday 10:25:47

Hello fsmithred
sorry to say:
your new live image cycles through devuan live boot menu endlessly (after a few secs after every possible selection)
(Did check sha256sum of course)
Computer 1: HP EliteBook 8460p
Computer 2: Dell Optiplex 780

I also tested the netinstall-iso with the same date on both computers.
devuan_freia_7.0-202610311659_amd64_netinstall.iso
it greets me before any boot-menu with:
fails to load com32.....
endlessly

Both computers did work with an older freia net-install.iso from May..

Last edited by Andre4freedom (Yesterday 10:26:46)

fsmithred · Yesterday 13:32:49

How did you prepare the boot media? It's working here in qemu and also dd'd to a usb it boots legacy or uefi.

Andre4freedom · Yesterday 13:41:14

dd to a USB stick for both ISO-image files , both machines in BIOS/Legacy mode.
The Dell Optiplex worked with the May-netinstall iso of freia.

Ron · Yesterday 15:17:06

The release notes and readme files on the desktop both say excalibur. Shouldn't that be changed to avoid confusion?

Also, the first problem I've noticed is that I can't move the top panel to the bottom.

Last edited by Ron (Yesterday 15:29:24)

dzz · Yesterday 15:21:25

Tested here in qemu direct from ISO, on one bios laptop and one uefi laptop. Both Toshiba. Also tested on both machines booted 'findiso' from USB (refracta2usb-prepared multiboot). Not tried grub loopback yet and no disposable USB's here to do a 'dd'.

That behaviour is not seen so far.

What I did notice was the desktop background seems slow to load, although the menu is already responsive.

Also htop/top/free -m shows ~500mb in use with nothing else open, I though somewhat excessive.

Looking at the installed package list I noticed 'kde partition manager', with ~200MB of qt6 deps. Since gparted is also there I didn't see a reason for it. Unless you choose to run KDE that's massive bloat.

I also saw 'atril' which is a recommend of task-xfce-desktop and has various *wayland* deps (although the ISO uses xorg), that's another ~200MB.

I purged all the above then dropped to init 1 and back to find gparted then fails silently. Not investigated why as yet.. polkit/dbus issue? I can look again later and capture some logs.

Apart from that, seems all good.

Ron · Yesterday 16:47:38

I'm not sure if this input will help, since I deleted Xfce and put on Mate, but the problem I had during past experimentation on Freia, with the Mate-settings-daemon continuing to run while trying to shut down the computer and hanging it up, has disappeared. So that's good.

Last edited by Ron (Yesterday 16:57:46)

Andre4freedom · Yesterday 17:34:04

Hello all,
I'm deeply sorry to have created such a stir. My fault: it was a bad USB stick which I thought to be trustworthy.
The system boots fine with a new stick.
I will test fsmithred's new live iso soon and report back.

As of the wrong release notes: I saw this in my tests this summer: it's a preview, a test-release though.
Thank you all for your good work.
Have a nice evening.

fsmithred · Yesterday 17:51:06

Thanks to all.

Release notes and README - these are the last to get done because we never know what debian will throw at us until the end. I made a note at the top of both to say that they have not yet been updated.

partitionmanager - was leftover in the package list from when I was testing that other installer that requires a bunch of qt stuff. (calamares) This is also the source of some of the wayland packages, but not all. At least one is there for yad.

The remaining four wayland libraries for atril only use some kilobytes of space.

gparted still works for me after removing partitionmanager and its deps.

The desktop background is controlled by a magic .desktop file that rbit wrote. Without that, the desktop background is black and the recommended fix (by upstream xfce team) is to recompile xfce. That ain't gonna happen here. Have a look at /etc/xdg/autostart/default-background.desktop if you're inclined to figure out another way to deal with it. Setting the bg with desktop-base the old way no longer works.

Rebuilding now with changes above and also replacing mate-polkit with xfce-polkit.

@Andre4freedom: It's not a big deal. I figured there was a problem with your image or some strange hardware issue. Glad to hear it was a simple solution.

Ron · Yesterday 18:49:40

I'm not sure if this should be reported here, but gdebi doesn't work.

greenjeans · Yesterday 19:54:43

The desktop background is controlled by a magic .desktop file that rbit wrote. Without that, the desktop background is black and the recommended fix (by upstream xfce team) is to recompile xfce. That ain't gonna happen here. Have a look at /etc/xdg/autostart/default-background.desktop if you're inclined to figure out another way to deal with it. Setting the bg with desktop-base the old way no longer works.

Well now i'm curious about this, am waiting for the next iso right now, but any chance you could share that file? Is it up on GDO somewhere?

Had a similar issue not long ago, it was caused by the wallpaper-manager's config file including monitor type in the info, which can be different from machine-to-machine, so in a live-session with a different monitor type than what it was built on it would fail and just put up a black screen.

fsmithred · Yesterday 21:47:48

Here's the background fix. It's specific for xfce.

# /etc/xdg/autostart/default-background.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Default-Background
Exec=sh -c 'cdis=$(xrandr | grep connected\  | cut -d " " -f 1) ; for port in $cdis; do rt=$(xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitor$port/workspace0/last-image 2>/dev/null); if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitor$port/workspace0/last-image -t string -s "/usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-background" --create; fi; done; mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart; echo "[Desktop Entry]\nHidden=true" > ~/.config/autostart/default-background.desktop'
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Reference: https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=18585

New iso here. It's around 100mb smaller without all the qt stuff.
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_freia/desktop-live/

sha256sum:

493e48c0bc7c745894255abbe1a0dd0ed6a82949141698ce692211bb9621b55f  devuan_freia_7-preview-2026-11-01_amd64_desktop-live.iso

@Ron: gdebi is not in the iso. I tried adding it without recommends in the running live system, and I agree that it did not work. Make a separate topic for that and maybe it can get fixed. Also check debian bugs - someone else may have reported it.

greenjeans · Today 00:21:16

Wow. oof. That's something right there. At this point I have to question Devuan's continuing use of XFCE as the default DE, especially considering the ongoing enshittification of XFCE and them spending their donations on trying to convert things to wayland.

This is a trivial matter in any useful desktop, Mate would be a far better choice as it's fairly open-minded towards these things. LXDE, (despite it's minor flaws which can be fixed) is a much better choice, Openbox systems laugh at this issue. I have seriously never in my life seen an Exec line that long, I applaud rbit for coming up with it, but let's face it, that's hacky as hell, and shouldn't be required in what is ostensibly a main-line DE.

golinux · Today 00:43:29

Feel free to show us the code!

ralph.ronnquist · Today 01:05:05

just for clarity, "Devuan" is the provider of curated software repositories that include all Debian software except systemd and dependent software. Everyone using Devuan is both free to choose and install the desktop setup, if any, they like to use. I believe it's even possible to install a couple of them on the one system, though it'd probably be slightly cumbersome to have several running at the same time as they have competing resource expectations. If you don't like xfce then don't use it. There is no reason to whinge about it.

greenjeans · Today 01:18:30

There is no reason to whinge about it.

I don't think it's "whinging about it" to suggest a different default DE. Rather it's progress taking into account the real-world changes into the afore-mentioned default DE, which is nothing like that DE from 10 years ago when Devuan was first created.

ralph.ronnquist · Today 03:28:03

Since you have this particular interest in that topic, you should send in a patch for it. Off hand I'd say it concerns the debconf aspect of tasksel which is a forked package, so you could possibly start there. All else is just whinging no matter what you think.

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#1 2026-10-31 17:50:27

freia desktop-live test iso

#2 Yesterday 10:25:47

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#3 Yesterday 13:32:49

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#4 Yesterday 13:41:14

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#5 Yesterday 15:17:06

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#6 Yesterday 15:21:25

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#7 Yesterday 16:47:38

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#8 Yesterday 17:34:04

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#9 Yesterday 17:51:06

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#10 Yesterday 18:49:40

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#11 Yesterday 19:54:43

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#12 Yesterday 21:47:48

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#13 Today 00:21:16

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#14 Today 00:43:29

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#15 Today 01:05:05

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#16 Today 01:18:30

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

#17 Today 03:28:03

Re: freia desktop-live test iso

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