getting printers working properly

Not sure what exactly is the problem but for me getting printers working always just came down to installing cups and adding the user to the appropriate groups.

No idea about that one sadly.

My experience in relation to non technical users and Devuan has been pretty good though. Even if switching people over from Mint has resulted in the occasional complaint about Devuan being minimalistic noone wanted to switch back stating they just loved the stability and the performance so much.

OK, both basic puzzles have been solved.

(1) I changed my sources.list as you recommended to:

deb [url]http://deb.devuan.org/merged[/url] ascii main
deb [url]http://deb.devuan.org/merged[/url] ascii-security main
deb [url]http://deb.devuan.org/merged[/url] ascii-updates main
deb [url]http://deb.devuan.org/devuan[/url] ascii-proposed main
# deb [url]http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged[/url] ascii-backports main

With the backports commented out but there if ever I need it.

(2) and msi, re your last post on Monday 15:03:46 showing that the mate-power-manager, after being unavailable because of a bug, was now in the repos, I did a:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install mate-power-manager

I then went to System/Preferences/Look and Feel/Screensaver and made sure the setting was: "Regard the computer as idle after 2 hours" and then to be on the safe side, I rebooted.

My monitor screen has now stopped going black every 10 minutes - to check, I have just had a one and a half hour film running in the background whilst I was away from the computer, and the screen did not black once.

So the those 2 puzzles were solved.

PS

I may be back in a couple of days to ask advice if I can't work things out for myself.
This year I have installed Linux Mint on a couple of neighbours' computers (as a good neighbour, without any fee but a cuppa and chocolate biscuit) and a few days ago I was approached by another neighbour asking if I could replace Windows 10 with something better on her laptop sometime next month. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is King. I'm thinking of putting on Devuan - it is so stable that I don't think a beginner will break it, and it is tons better than Mint. However, I have 2 problems to sort out first - getting printers working properly and adjusting screen brightness (no problem in Devuan Jessie but not adjustable in Devuan 2 ascii). If these can be solved then I will feel confident enough to recommend Devuan to anybody and everybody. I'll do a bit of research first and come back here if I'm stuck.

Thanks again. Cheers.

I assume this is because mate-power-manager is currently not available. But that should be fixed soonish.

There you go: https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/2 … 89.en.html

Running apt-get update will make the package available. Please report if installing it solves your problem.

Thanks!

I guess mate-power-manager is still in proposed. I usually do not add proposed to my sources list, some do and you can test some newer fixes for packages before they go into stable. Probably not recommended on mission critical systems but the quality of the packages is usually top notch.

My sources.list shows:

deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports main

Is this correct?

If not, why did it install that way?

It's not wrong, but as the release notes state, you should rather use deb.devuan.org. It will enable Devuan to do some load balancing. See: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2140

How did you install?

You don't have to change that, obviously. But, for the reason mentioned above, it would be nice if you did. Use backports only if you need a particular package to be newer than the one coming with the stable distribution. If you don't, it's probably the best to comment that line.

https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list will give you a clue.

I assume this is because mate-power-manager is currently not available. But that should be fixed soonish.

There is:

/usr/bin/xset s off && /usr/bin/xset -dpms

man xset gives an explanation of what that does.

I can't answer as to why the installer uses "pkgmaster" by default; however, I would use the recommended sources as given in the release notes...deb.devuan.

The expert install allows the choice to use deb.devuan.

The ascii-proposed isn't necessary to add to the sources.

Change backports to .deb.devuan also.

For one method to stop screen-blanking, read the following thread for fixes for lightdm and slim. I'm not sure which DM the Mate desktop comes with. Haven't tried the lightdm fix since I don't use it, but it should work.

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2138

Others may have a different or better method.

Greetings.

I have installed Devuan ascii and am puzzled on 3 counts, 2 of them very basic so I will ask these 2 now to see if someone can clarify:

Puzzle (1) What is the correct sources.list?

My sources.list shows:

deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports main

Is this correct?

If not, why did it install that way?

I read in the release notes at https://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/Release_notes.txt:

Starting from Devuan 2.0 ASCII, users should use exclusively
"deb.devuan.org" or ""{CC}.deb.devuan.org" in their 'sources.list'
file, e.g.:

    deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main
    deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
    deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main
    deb http://deb.devuan.org/devuan ascii-proposed main

So do I need to change my sources.list at this time and if so, what about backports?
I have no idea what thus ascii-proposed is ...

Puzzle(2) My screen keeps going black.

I have to repeatedly shake my mouse whilst I am watching a film, which is most distracting and irritating.

On Devuan Jessie with Mate desktop, I went to System/Preferences/Look and Feel/Screensaver and set: "Regard the computer as idle after 2 hours" and there was no problem.
Now on Devuan ascii with Mate desktop, this screensaver function does not work.

Is there a command-line remedy to stop the screen going black?

Thanks for all the great work done in making this such a stable system.