Thanks for testing. Here's a new live iso. This one has bootx64.efi and shimx64.efi.signed in efi/boot. I made this one using refractasnapshot and had to copy the shim into the iso build tree manually. If it works, I'll work it into live-sdk so it gets into the official isos.

devuan_5_signed-test_amd64-20250110_1825.iso
https://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/files/experimental/

sha256sum:

ec458d2e023b7d6abc982c8c0f690250c562133a5b0491ced3226602d662903d  devuan_5_signed-test_amd64-20250110_1825.iso

Oh, duh! I did it. See, I'm so distraught over this I didn't even notice the size of those packages. Thanks.

@mtbvfr - you don't need to comment out any lines for the gamma settings. If you want to play with the gamma settings, just click on the gamma button when the window comes up and you can adjust it. If you run it a second time, it won't show your last setting. I obviously don't understand how it works.

This one is a little fancier and requires yad to be installed. It gives you a graphical slider. I'm not sure I did the gamma parts right and I never use that.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# set_bright3b

set -x

# Set these names according to what xrandr tells you.
# For a single monitor, comment out the second xrandr command
# at the bottom of the script.

monitor_1="LVDS-1"
monitor_2=""

get_current_values () {
	
	current_bright=$(xrandr --verbose | grep -m1 Brightness | cut -d"." -f2)
	
	if  [ "$current_bright" = 0 ] ; then
		let current_bright="9"
	fi
	
	current_gamma=$(xrandr --verbose |grep -m1 Gamma | cut -d":" -f3)
	gamma1="$current_gamma"
}

select_brightness () {
	
	br1=$(yad --scale --title=Brightness --width=300 --min-value=2 --max-value=10  --value="${current_bright:0:1}" \
		--mark=2:2  --mark=3:3 --mark=4:4 --mark=5:5 --mark=6:6 --mark=7:7 --mark=8:8 --mark=9:9 --mark=10:10 \
		--page=1 --button=OK:0 --button="Gamma":1 --button=Exit:2)
		
		exit_code="$?"
		
		if [[ $exit_code -eq 1 ]] ; then
			br1="${current_bright:0:1}"
			select_gamma
		elif [[ $exit_code -eq 2 ]] ; then
			exit 0
		fi
}

select_gamma () {
	gm1=$(yad --form --field=Gamma:NUM "${current_gamma}\!0.5..1.5\!0.1\!1")
	gamma1="${gm1:0:3}"
}

get_current_values
select_brightness

if [ "$br1" = 10 ] ; then
	bright1="1.0"
	bright2="1.0"
else
	bright1="0.$br1"
	bright2="$bright1"
	# Uncomment the following 3 lines if monitor2 should be less bright.
	#br2="$br1"
	#(( br2-=1 ))
	#bright2="0.$br2"
fi

xrandr --output "$monitor_1" --brightness "$bright1" --gamma "${gamma1}:${gamma1}:${gamma1}"
#xrandr --output "$monitor_2" --brightness "$bright2" --gamma "${gamma1}:${gamma1}:${gamma1}"

exit 0

I already did try it yesterday. The iso with zstd booted about 5 seconds faster than xz in qemu. That was about 1 minute, 20 seconds of which were at the boot menu. Building the iso was about 2 minutes faster (9 vs. 11). I haven't tried it on usb yet.

This will be in the next build of refractasnapshot. I already added support for zstd in the initramfs.

The 32-bit kernels in excalibur and ceres have been removed. Did anyone happen to save the last deb packages for 686-pae? The last live-iso I made has 6.5 from last April. Not that using those versions is a real solution since they won't get security updates. But it would be nice to have an iso with the last one.

Meanwhile, I've made an excalibur 32-bit live-iso with the daedalus backports kernel. That's another unsatisfactory solution for the same and other reasons, but it does work.

N.B. When trying to upgrade my i386 excalibur VM, aptitude puked on the t64 versions of packages. 'apt upgrade' and 'apt dist-upgrade' worked ok and all the t64 packages got installed.

You can change the compression type for the squashfs in /etc/refractasnapshot.conf. Let me know if zstd works. I'm on chimaera at the moment and it doesn't seem to be an option.

For faster response on opening programs/files, use the toram option. For a live usb use toram=/path/to/filesystem.squashfs
Go make coffee while you're waiting for it to boot.

For reference, here's what mine look like (using sysvinit). I think they look the same as what GlennW posted, except I put the files in alphabetical order.
Note that it uses Default-Stop, not Default-Start.

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          umountfs
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:     umountroot
# Default-Start:
# Default-Stop:      0 6
# Short-Description: Turn off swap and unmount all local file systems.
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          umountroot
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Stop:       halt reboot kexec
# Default-Start:
# Default-Stop:      0 6
# Short-Description: Mount the root and /usr filesystems read-only.
### END INIT INFO

If you're using refractasnapshot, replace /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/isolinux/splash.png with the 640x480 png of your choice. (.jpg should work, too.) It will be copied to the right places for booting the iso with isolinux and/or grub if you arranged it to work with bios and/or uefi.

No issues going to runlevel 3 except you have to be root (or sudo). Just don't try this on a distro that disables the display manager in runlevel 3 (like Refracta desktop isos). In that case you'd have to do 'init 4' or 'init 5' or re-enable the dm in 3.

Assuming you took the default desktop install, your display manager would be slim. Also assuming you installed sysvinit and not runit or openrc as the init system, you can just disable your display manager.

update-rc.d slim defaults-disabled

or maybe you have lightdm instead of slim.

After that, you'll get a console login and then you can run startx to get the desktop.

Another way to revert su to the old behavior is to put the following in /etc/default/su (which you will probably have to create).

ALWAYS_SET_PATH yes