I haven't tried it, but I expect that you would only need to change the source of the packages, and the custom-CD and simple-CDD instructions should work with devuan. If you use that procedure and just note the changes you had to make, that would be helpful.

In one of the posts above, you mentioned wanting to make a live-CD. You can use live-build from the repository to do that. You could also use live-sdk (not packaged) or refractasnapshot (in experimental repo) as alternate methods. There are some threads in the Documentation section of the forum regarding live-build and live-sdk.

What part of those procedures failed when you tried them in devuan? If any of the tools are missing, which ones?

And regarding the missing sqlite lib, it's in stretch, ascii and ceres. It's not in jessie. You can blame debian for that.

# aptitude search sqlite |grep odbc
p   libsqliteodbc                   - ODBC driver for SQLite embedded database  

# apt-cache policy libsqliteodbc
libsqliteodbc:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.9995-1
  Version table:
     0.9995-1 0
        500 http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ stretch/main amd64 Packages
        100 http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ascii/main amd64 Packages
         90 http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ceres/main amd64 Packages

You said it was read-only, so I guess you can't fix it.
http://wiki.friendsofdevuan.org/doku.ph … r15-laptop

That was a problem with beta2. It has been fixed. The installer isos will install wireless firmware unless you select expert install and say you don't want it. In the live isos, wireless firmware and firmware-linux-nonfree are installed and can be removed after installation by running a script.

Yes, that will work.

1. Be aware that some system users might get different uid/gid. That might be an issue if you're doing stuff over the local network. (I ran into this with geneweb.) It might depend on the order that some apps are installed.

2. I usually copy my home files last, and sometimes I just mount the old partition and symlink to the old home.
It's usually better not to copy your old desktop configs. Some things may have changed.

3. 'dpkg -l' will give you a list of all installed packages. You don't need to install all of them, as most will be installed automatically with others. In some cases, package names have changed. 'apt-cache search' or 'aptitude search' for partial names will help.

I don't know if there will be an official bare-bones-with-X release. Maybe something like that from Refracta or one of the other derivatives (or "project" if that's what you're calling your rose now.)

In the past, I made refracta isos with no-X when the Testing release went into freeze. But those builds are not minimal. I can't resist adding a lot of extra packages. That will happen again soon. When debian jessie was in testing, I also made some early isos with openbox and sysvinit. I might do that again, but it would probably be less polished. One way or another, I can assure you that ascii isos are coming soon.

This works in the full desktop install. My user (named 'user') is not in the sudo group and does not have any sudo privs.
You're probably missing a package or two. I see some hints in the auth.log when I start synaptic. Make sure you have consolekit and libpam-ck-connector. It's possible that you also need libsystemd0 for this to work. I don't know.

Jun  4 22:02:31 user polkitd(authority=local): Operator of unix-session:/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1 successfully authenticated as unix-user:root to gain ONE-SHOT authorization for action com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic for unix-process:3030:52170 [/bin/sh /usr/bin/synaptic-pkexec] (owned by unix-user:user)
Jun  4 22:02:31 user pkexec: pam_unix(polkit-1:session): session opened for user root by (uid=1000)
Jun  4 22:02:31 user pkexec: pam_ck_connector(polkit-1:session): cannot determine display-device
Jun  4 22:02:31 user pkexec[3031]: user: Executing command [USER=root] [TTY=unknown] [CWD=/home/user] [COMMAND=/usr/sbin/synaptic]

If that's not enough, check the package list for the desktop install. Her'e's the list for the desktop-live which is what you get if you take the default desktop installation from the dvd (plus a few packages to run it live and install it.)
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_jessie/ … e.list.txt

The pre-checked items in the installer options window are "Disable auto-login..." (desktop and console). Un-check them if you want auto-login in the installed system.

A live iso with just xorg and a window manager is something I'm thinking about for ascii. Then people can add stuff (or fail to add it and report problems.) I will bring this up in discussion with the devs.

That exact same thing drove me to writing live installers.

You can set single-click in thunar preferences, but it won't affect the desktop icons. For a short time when debian jessie was still in testing, xfce desktop had single-click. I guess they considered it a bug and "fixed" it. It's possible that there's a way to recover that feature by messing with config files, but I've never tried it.

It's already in the repo. Install fvwm, click on the desktop to get a menu and select fvwm95 setup (or something like that - it's gone now that I've run it.) You'll get a crude looking wizard that lets you choose some options. I took the defaults, and now my window title bars are win95 blue.

For a more modern look, there's also fvwm-crystal. There's also fvwm1. I didn't try that. I assume that it's more retro than retro.

@rufwoof:
You're right that there's no console autologin in debian-live jessie. That's a new thing for jessie, and I don't know if it was intended that way or a consequence of deprecating live-build. Lack of autologin doesn't add much in the way of security, since the login and password are public knowledge.

The console autologin is enabled in /lib/live/config/0160-sysvinit.

sed -i -e "s|^\([^:]*:[^:]*:[^:]*\):.*getty.*\<\(ttyS\?[0-9]*\).*$|\1:/bin/login -f ${LIVE_USERNAME} </dev/\2 >/dev/\2 2>\&1|" /etc/initta

Since you're modifying the images, you can do it however you need. You could remove live-config or modify the script or create a hook script to disable the sed line.

You must be looking at one of the live isos. Autologin to desktop and console has been a standard debian-live feature for as long as I've been using it. (since Lenny). I think the reasoning behind it is that if you are running a live session, then you are probably sitting at the computer and will shut down the session and take your live media with you when you are finished. Autologin gets disabled for the installed system unless you change the defaults in the installer.

Note that on a regular installation, if you ctrl-alt-Fn to console and login and don't log out, that login will still be accessible even if you go back to desktop and lock the screen. This is not new and not unique to devuan. I first discovered it on debian.

I just installed lirc in devuan, and the messages I get at the end of the install say that there is no /etc/lircd.conf and to configure it manually. Running 'dpkg-reconfigure lirc' returns without any messages and without runing the ncurses debconf. Installing the same package in debian jessie does not give me the messages about the config file. Running 'dpkg-reconfigure lirc' again returns without any messages and without ncurses debconf. So, I don't know if it's broken or not. Can you use it? Do you have or know what goes in the missing config file?

Refracta was declared stable last August. The main things that were holding up Devuan from being declared stable had to do with the installer and desktop-base. Refracta doesn't use either of those, so there was no reason to wait. Devuan is as stable as Debian because it IS Debian with a few unnecessary dependencies removed.