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#1 Off-topic » An exploration on Devuan-Release semantics » 2025-12-12 09:33:52
- chomwitt
- Replies: 0
Hi to all Devuan community.
I'll make an effort to explore what it means (for me) when we speak of a Devuan Release.
What is means to speak of Devuan and a Release of it .
Something is released, meaning it's becoming public - making it available to more interested people.
The 'Release' event stresses a time point meaning that a commitment of resources to create and support a stable version .Other distros dont have releases.And of course that is a significant aspect of the team's filter policy since between stable releases you effectively ban (or make it more time consuming) further functionality updates in thousand of software. That seems harsh in our era of the ultra-hype networks where fomo and ultrahype attention devouring cycles have been ingrained in users deepest inclination .
More specificaly we make certain version of Devuan available to the public.So that is a special case of making software publicly accessible.
In the 70s,80s,90s software release meant making copies of certain software in a certain info-storage medium , packaging it and either transfering copies to brick-shops (visible in cities where people aggregate) or letting people know from mass media and giving instruction to facilitate brick-mail service. So there are public-space-time places where people's attention aggregates and focus. In ancient greek it was called agora. Are there in our times (2020s) digital public places functioning like agora ? (i would dare to say that an internet search engine in a sense substitutes a trait that a cyber-agore should have).
From 2000s, 2010s, 2020s information and thus software can be made available via the internet. Using a computer connected to the internet a user can access information and thus software.
In our case a Devuan version is made available via the internet. But since we speak of a Devuan version released to the public we speak about a Devuan Release. (but it may be wise to social unstable times for a distro to has official brick release channels in each country-cost-security-support wise.). (narrowing the release relation throught a cable misses formost a human support element since a distro must be installed on hardware which could less easy that it is said)
The Devuan team and broadly the Devuan community creates and maintains what we call a Devuan distro release.
Devuan is a GNU+@Linux distribution . Thus @LinuxKerne; + @GNUSoftware + third party software .
GNU software would currently broadly refer to software created and maintained by people either affiliated at some point in time to the GNU project . But also the GNU project historically due to its foundational pioneer work in establishing libre software and its central role in aiding in Linux kernel development (via accessible necessary tool like gcc compiler and glibc among others) is mentioned not only from a practical standpoint (how many packages are in a linux distro) but from a honorable standpoint. Read Richard Stallman's argument regarding the naming aspect .@Linux and the GNU System.
But i think naming a Devuan Release a distribution hides many procedural semantics and highlights an 'inert' view as a set of packaged software.
Devuan Release includes:
an Installer
repositories of the releases (from where it customary users to update and install software) . Those repos are the result of complex processes that maintain a constant flow of properly packaged binary software. That i guess means automated compilation, packaging,testing . Keep in mind here that Devuan support many architerctures.
package manager of certain type (apt in our case)
a set of software packages rules - policies , community intentions-goals to which packaging and selection of packages should-must align. In a way the DevuanTeam-Community acts as a filter. So in a sense for someone to choose a distro she/he should among other learn the team's goals-intention to check for alignment to his/her intentions.
Interestingly that is not software but could we speak of a 'distribution without naming the 'filter' used? And ofcourse is not random that that is reflected to the www.devuan.org welcome definition where the team's intention is central .@->see Devuan Infrastructure
The basic difference of of the software included in Devuan from other PC software "distros-bundles' is the libre licence terms. Although the term distro is not used in @proprietary software when a user installed e.g windows essentially installs a windows kernel plus basic user software.
A basic question from a user standpoint , not familiar with linux distros, would be : What software is included ?
and perhaps What hardware is supported? . And WHY should someone access software through a distribution ?
(a filter between software developers and the user? a middleman .) Interestingly that question is linked also to the current dram price rally (as of late 2025). The middleman could enforce widely use libraries that are share by most of what her distro offers. That could decrease pressure on memory . Compare with the late info surfacing in social about windows apps levering web stack drain memory as godzilla's pet would strain a family's food supply.
So Devuan is made available via the internet.
That means that Devuan (as software) is located in one computer that is connected to the internet. That means a computer thats follows some comm protocols in order to be accessible (like having a publicly usable address -url-) .
So it seem that one basic information to 'get' the Devuan Release is a related URL or
Here is an internet url : https://files.devuan.org/ (Devuan release archive)
That is an internet url that can be used in any computer 'connected to internet' to 'download' Devuan installation images.
*_netinstall.iso
*_server.iso
*_desktop.iso
devuan_excalibur_6.0.0_amd64_desktop-live.iso
Devuan installer that will boot-strap a Devuan installation process
Here is another internet url that i like : http://deb.devuan.org/ that contains the packages of all devuan releases (released devuan versions)
---------------------
What we call distribution is a kernel,some user programs,a package manager,and a mirror or a repo.
Offering an installer. Installing a set of programs we need to start using a computer.
Family - semiotic - resemblances : a distro as a certain type of library.
Synonyms : Software libraries. A set of book, tagged and placed following a certain system of rules guiding storing and retrieval. debtags was also modeled from principles (facets) originating as a certain conceptual organization of libraries.
---------------------
@ DevuanWiki / Devuan Releases
#2 Re: DIY » ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ? » 2025-11-29 12:26:31
Hi . I have only ALSA installed.
$ aplay --list-devices
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC1220 Analog [ALC1220 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 1: ALC1220 Digital [ALC1220 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
...
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 10: HDMI 4 [VA3456-WQHD]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
...
When i do a test :
$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
i hear the sound from my headphones connected to my pc cases 3.5mm jack.
My monitor has speakers and i would like to make my programs use that as 'audio sink'.
How do i do that ?
Changing the card (with F6) in alsamixer i see a list of s/pdif rectangles but i dont know what they represent and also the display only 00.
#3 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-30 12:08:38
It would be interesting to learn the touch-typing skill of programmers and hackers that are wellknown. For example Dennis Ritchie ,Ken Thompson , Torvald , Stallman etc.. Also i think in the pdp era you would call that skill possibly @(4.25)touch-flipping since you had to constantly flip switches to enter a program to the memory.
Speaking of Stallman is documented the impact that hacking had in his hands and his general health. On the other hand Torvald seems he avoided serious health issues (although i remember a video of his room showing him coding standing). Maybe he was more aware of the negative consequences of such skills?
In the batch processing punchedcard era knowing that in case of error you would have to create (type) your program from start wouldnt make you very cautious and thus touchtyping would be considered maybe not so helpfull ?
The RSI argument should also be taken in consideration . There are many angles. From a personal angle i want to be able to type (assuming other input tech are not inhand) until late age. An objective like that surely would lower the ceiling of what would be acceptable touch-typing performance (from my view) .Assuming that keeping a highly touch-typing performance stresses my neuron more . On the other hand if i want to type only in my job until 60s then i could increase that performance thinking that damaged hand neurons is not a top priority..
#4 Re: Off-topic » The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject » 2025-07-29 09:18:39
I cant edit my initial post so i add here a link to a video on Unix history where at 3.33 we hear Dennis M. Ritchie again stress the need for an enviroment that encourages communication and the creation of a community. I think it's obvious that Ritchie is reading his words from the paper i quoted at the start.
@UNIX: Making Computers Easier To Use -- AT&T Archives film from 1982,
Anyway digging into timesharing , Multics, DTSS etc one finds that some novel ideas 'attributed' to Unix like the filesystem or even pipes where ideas originated in earlier systems.
So for example in the same video (13.20) Brian W. Kernighan says that the most importand Unix contribution was pipelines . But according to Communication Files: Interprocess IO before Pipes M. Douglas McIlroy:
Communication files significantly antedated Unix pipes.Evidence from design docu-
ments puts the origin of the concept sometime in 1967, between the writing of an outline
of features for the Phase II DTSS system dated March, which doesn’t mention communi-
cation files, and a summary of executive services dated 29 August, which does.
#5 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-29 08:58:49
Some comments from the J.Atwood post that offer contrary insights:
typing speed is only relevant if it obstructs your flow of thinking.
With modern IDE typing code is more like playing game, than like typing full words. You are constantly using shortcuts, choosing things from menus, and copying stuff. Also tabulation is completely different (and more important) in code, than in English (or any other language).
i’ve found that I’m more productive, when I type slower, and stops often to think about what I want to type next
So I don’t think fast typing is required for programmer. It’s rather the other way around - when somebody can’t write fast he is less probably a good programmer, because that means he probably hasn’t been programming a lot.
A good programmer won’t need to type fast since their code will be succinct and compact. it doesn’t matter if you type half as fast if your program is 4 times smaller than the fast typist’s…
In College, a professor said don’t learn to type. His reasoning was that you need you hands for your whole career and typing fast will bring on rsi, secondly by typing fast you will avoid coming up short cuts for doing repetitive tasks and being more creative.
I think you are wrong. What you are basically saying is: An artist, how can’t paint a wall very fast, will never produce nice paintings. How can this be right? Of course if the artist is exceptionally slow, he will never finish his painting - but ultimately mechanical speed is of less matter…
Code contains relatively large numbers of non-alphabet characters, which are not as easy to type.
Teaching someone to type is a lot easier than teaching someone to program effectively. What you are trying to do is to equate the entire profession to the easiest part of it. It degrades and lessens the profession to say that we are just typists.
In favor of touch-typing :
Non-typists won’t get this: typists write, while non-typists type and write. Typists don’t know they’re typing.
Would you ride with a driver who had to look at his hands every few seconds to find the wheel?
The root of it is that typing is an abstraction layer for what we’re really doing. The less barrier we have between our real task, and our conscious mind, the better.
#6 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-28 15:28:36
Strange i keep finding relevant info :
@ Bad Keyboard Advice from Programers by xahlee.info
@ To touch or not to touch-type , pros and cons by Xeh Lee.
Do not listen to programers for typing advice
If you are a programer, you probably have seen programers talk about keyboard, or how to press the control key.
It's all WRONG!
If you want good advice for healthy and efficient typing, ask professional data-entry clerks, not programers.
So encouraging touch-typing and bigger speeds without taking into account ergonomics could be a mistake. Meaning health considerations should atleast put a maximum time frame in which a programmer should exercise his/her touch-typing skills.
But interstingly Xeh Lee thinks that for a programmer of a blogger contrary to jobs as dataclerks it happens this :
Your whole day's keystrokes probably can be done in less than 30 minutes if you just type continuously
#7 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-28 12:43:41
Another argument again the importance of touch typing is that assuming the programming is a form of communication surely there is programming analogous to the blather (as to 'talk rapidly without making much sense').I've heard the argument that human (especially women) when socializing talk too much for various topics but that non-sensical talk acts as a socia-glue and it's very important (but in the social context not communicating with machinces!)
But again.. i've read stories of RMS being in nirvana codding state hacking teco and other programs in his mit ailab eden back in the 1970s where he seemingly was programming like talking to the machine.
And i think (sorry if i repeated that argument) that the idea-image of a programmer touch-typing-programming it has manager-wetdreams vibes. As a manager i would like to see my payed workforce sweat and be productive. And maybe that is the easies but perhaps the most erroneous way to judge programming productivity by expecting your programmers to touch-typing constantly like crazies.
#8 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-27 22:02:31
Links to related blogposts:
#9 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-27 21:22:29
golinux thanks for correcting my misplaced forum post .
As for your latest response. if you refer to the spiritual side i think you are right for the need of a spiritual awakening.
#10 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-27 14:10:24
golinux . Arent we humans tool-makers and thus by extension machine-makers? Isnt that the part of our nature that elevated us above dinosaurs and thus making us capable of protecting earth from meteorites and other life-extiction events? Your logic gives me Dr. Stephen Falken vibes from the film WarGames.
#11 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-27 13:53:52
stargate thanks for the links. I found some interesting.
I think i've made a mistake .I should have posted this post in Offtopic. Can be transferred there?. Sorry.
Anyway i think the elevation of the touchtyping skill to a necessity (especially the way it was presented by it's original author) misses entirely the ergonomics and health issues side. The hands needs protection. And i forgot to mention that touch-typing could become obselete not by LLM-AI but by LLM-powered-speech assistant
I think programmers should support and try that tech . I imagine my self dictating code by voice to my computer even when my hands's nerves would become too fragile.
I propose a separate subforum for ergonomics and health issues of Devuan admins - users- programmers. The subforum would cover also accessability aspects of devuan. (elderly,disabilities etc).
#13 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-26 21:38:47
greenjeans i aggree.That's why i stressed the -ultra hype- aspect of current LLM driven AI processes. I found also : @ AI coders think they’re 20% faster — but they’re actually 19% slower
When the devs use the AI, they’re spending less time looking for information and writing code — and instead they’re prompting the AI, they’re reviewing the AI, or they’re doing nothing while they’re waiting for the AI.
#14 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-26 21:29:42
@golinux you dont have high hopes for our future. But think maybe you are hasty. Think about slavery. From 2000 thousand years ago when Jesus start speaking against it humanity took a rather long and back and forth trip until it reached a more civilized attitude abolishing such practices. And it could be argued that that happened not from our kind souls but because Watt did his steam engine thing... So i think solution can be found and evolved to our current problems but maybe it needs more time and an enviroment where people can discuss new solutions, try and test them and apply the more successfull ones.
#15 Re: Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-26 20:27:29
@SteveM your approach and experience , althought more close to lowlevel and hardware , makes me think . Could it be that low level programming is less 'forgiving' ? Thus more caution is needed to control the behavior of a programs to the bit level . And maybe the more higher we get to the data types used and more close to the human user then a program has more space to 'play' , data types get more fuzzy and thus a programmer could have more flexibility moving away from strict formal protocols ?
And isnt it true that AI (even in it's current LLM, hyped form) exemplifies that fluent - space - where we humans feel cosy and speak with ease and speed letting our wished flow to the AI agent ?
So when a programmer uses the highest level possible of APIs (thus a level below an AI-LLM guided programming) doesnt also have a taste of that fluent programming -amenable perhaps tp bigger speeds and thus favored by touch typing skills- ?
That @LLM assisted approach reminds me also of @literate programming.
I thing the goal here was to allow a more fluent and thus speedy programming style.
So to wrap my thoughts up. It seems that speed in coding would be lost as we move more closely to fixed hardware confronting more 'friction'. And i would add that friction also comes when we move into an environment where a software's subsystem written by one must conform-align to many other subsystem's interfaces.Of course it could be argued that the programmer should just write the code!! All the difficulties i previously wrote it's not his/her job!!. But if we follow that line of thinking that that bare coding is perhaps a skill that indeed need touch-typing but the same time easily replaceable by LLM agents.
#16 Off-topic » A programmer should be a touch typist ? » 2025-07-26 16:51:07
- chomwitt
- Replies: 23
A programmer in his blogpost Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret (2008) believes that touch typing is a base skill of a programmers .Have IT not and you'll became invisible among peers no matter how much good you are in other areas.
I raise a couple of arguments in the contrary.
1. In the AI - ultra hype era according to the ultra hype engines programming is a passed fashion. Just tell an AI agent what you want and no stress...
Cause now my computer writes faster than me
And all the jobs are owned by monopolies@ Electric Fragments - Wasted Code by Vulcan Ivy
2. Ok . You can write-comment-talkabout your code real fast. But i think that the programming environment has become so complex that maybe you have to study really a lot before you can write code that can become integrated in distros or in various propriatery -eco-systems. And that complexity increases the drag... and the friction in the point that i think the image of a programming writing really fast doesnt strike me as very plausible image as in the past.
#17 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-19 18:21:34
Although solved i still cant understand why on earth secureBOOT is needed if i add a gpu driver in my kernel. Wouldnt be enough to sign a module with a sysadm priv key in a kernel's keyring?
> (7) To maintain secure boot mode, the kernel modules must be signed and the
> kernel must check the signature on them. The key must be compiled into
> the kernel or the bootloader or must reside in the UEFI database.Wait right here. This is NOT mandated by UEFI, nor by anyone else. It
might be a nice thing that some people and companies want to implement,
but please don't think that some external entity is requiring that Linux
implement this, that is not true.
@kernel email list / Re: [GIT PULL] Load keys from signed PE binaries (2013)
@ Linus vs Matthew Garrett on secureboot . (2019)
#18 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Help needed to enable secure boot. » 2025-07-13 18:46:12
@s1mple thanks for the reply.
- There is /sys/firmware/efi/efivars with dozen of efivars.
- mokutils report pm, kek and db keys.
Before i reinstall grub-efi i want to search a little more and understand : If my initial Daedalus installtion was uefi secure boot compatible (with the shim) why then uefi cant boot to grub ?
For context :
@Daedalus installation guide.
@ debian installation manual / 3.6.3. Systems with UEFI firmware
#19 Hardware & System Configuration » Help needed to enable secure boot. » 2025-07-13 08:45:27
- chomwitt
- Replies: 4
Distro: Devuan Daedalus
Enabling the secure boot from my motherboard's UEFI setup utility my PC can not boot.
Early in the booting , before i see the GRUB's menu, i see a error message from the UEFI
'Secure Boot violation , Invalid signature detected. Check secure policy in setup'.
Disabling 'secure boot' i can again boot as usual.
I posted my issue here because my first explanation i can think is that somehow my grub image
is not signed correctly.
But i see :
$ sudo dpkg -l | grep shim
ii shim-helpers-amd64-signed 1+15.7+1 amd64 boot loader to chain-load signed boot loaders (signed by Debian)
ii shim-signed:amd64 1.39+15.7-1 amd64 Secure Boot chain-loading bootloader (Microsoft-signed binary)
ii shim-signed-common 1.39+15.7-1 all Secure Boot chain-loading bootloader (common helper scripts)
ii shim-unsigned
So how should i proceed?
#20 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-12 21:06:56
@g4stra thanks . That worked.
$ sudo dpkg -l | grep nvidia
..
ii nvidia-persistenced
..#21 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-12 15:52:40
#22 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-11 20:57:54
In my rinit system I tried by
# runscvchdir single and then :
# cd /var/lib/dkms
# mokutil --import mok.pub
Failed to enroll new keys#23 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-11 12:31:48
[SOLVED] by enroll-ing the nvidia pub key from inside the bios.
1. we move nvidia-modsign-crt-89A7BE16.der in /boot/efi/EFI/debian
2. we start uefi setup
3. advanced / menus / boot / secure boot / keymanagement / append default db
But i still havent figured why sudo mokutil --import nvidia-pubkey.der didnt work neither the error with the persistent nvidia daemon.
#24 Hardware & System Configuration » [SOLVED] Help with signing nvidia's driver with secure boot enabled » 2025-07-07 09:18:34
- chomwitt
- Replies: 8
Release: Daedalus 5 (debian bookwarm 12)
@ devuan wiki / nvidia gpus
@Debian Secure Boot: To be, or not to be, that is the question! . Nov 29, 2024 by Anna. A detailed view on signing nvidia drivers in bookwarm.
@ debian wiki / NvidiaGraphicsDrivers.
@ deb / nvidia-driver / bugs
related workflows : Display current status of gpu accelaration. If nvidia-driver is not installed Daedalus rollbacks in using software rasterizer . Lower analysis and in order of ten more slow.
Current understanding : deb package nvidia-kernel will try to build the driver and sign it. But with secure boot enabled those keys created during that process must be 'rolled'. A process that i understand to mean that those keys must get known by the UEFI in order to allow during boot the nvidia driver to load. That process doesnt proceed in Daedalus.
$ mokutil --sb-state
SecureBoot enabled
$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree
$ ls /var/lib/dkms/
mok.key mok.pub
$ sudo mokutil --import /var/lib/dkms/mok.pub
[sudo] password for chomwitt:
input password:
input password again:
Failed to enroll new keysA related issue during nvidia-driver installation :
$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.142+deb12u3) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.1.0-33-amd64
Errors were encountered while processing:
nvidia-persistenced
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
...
$ dpkg -l nvidia-persistenced
iF nvidia-persistenced 535.171.04-1~deb12u1 amd64 daemon to maintain persistent software state in the NVIDIA driver/var/log/syslog during nvidia-driver installation:
2025-07-07T15:17:03.921569+03:00 enousold nvidia-persistenced: Started (10510)
2025-07-07T15:17:03.921732+03:00 enousold nvidia-persistenced: Failed to open libnvidia-cfg.so.1: libnvidia-cfg.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
2025-07-07T15:17:03.921749+03:00 enousold nvidia-persistenced: Shutdown (10510)But libnvidia-cfg1 is pulled by nvidia-driver and contains
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/current/libnvidia-cfg.so.535.247.01
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/current/libnvidia-cfg.so.1I found a 2017 bug report on fedora that includes a strace session that resembles mine.
I found also a test for whether efivars are writeable:
# echo -n "test" > test.data
# efivar -f test.data -w -n 605dab50-e046-4300-abb6-3dd810dd8b23-MokTest
#25 Off-topic » The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject » 2025-07-06 02:33:10
- chomwitt
- Replies: 12
For computer science at Bell Laboratories, the period 1968-1969 was somewhat unsettled. The main reason for this was the slow, though clearly inevitable, withdrawal of the Labs from the Multics project.From the point of view of the group that was to be most involved in the beginnings of Unix (K. Thompson, Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, J. F. Ossanna), the decline and fall of Multics had a directly felt effect. We didn’t want to lose the pleasant niche we occupied, because no similar ones were available; even the time-sharing service that would later be offered under GE’s operating system did not exist.
What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form.We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.
The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System , Dennis M. Ritchie
RMS:The AI Lab of the 1970s was by all accounts a special place. It was a bit like the Garden of Eden,It hadn’t occurred to us not to cooperate.
The demise of ITS, and the AI Lab hacker community which had sustained it, had been a traumatic blow to Stallman. As a programmer used to working with the best machines and the best software, however, Stallman faced what he could only describe as a “stark moral choice”: either swallow his ethical objection for “proprietary” software – the term Stallman and his fellow hackers used to describe any program that carried copyright terms or an end-user license that restricted copying and modification – or dedicate his life to building an alternate, nonproprietary system of software programs.RMS:I asked myself: what could I, an operating-system developer, do to improve the situation? It wasn’t until I examined the question for a while that I realized an operating-system developer was exactly what was needed to solve the problem.
Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution
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