As with gnome project and the Linux kernel, Debian is a dependent of corporate funding and leaving "X" is a PR and virtue signalling stunt, staged to deflect any outrage from the hordes of the professionally offended. They are also doing what the "community", SPI and those other "non profit" orgs expect them to do. It's important to see it for what it is.

The "professionally offended" are useful idiots who can be directed against specific targets, via the phenomenon of "social media", to defame and ultimately "cancel" individuals who don't follow the narrative - "not following the narrative" can be equal to not publically denouncing/supporting something.

We're at a point where major FOSS projects are top heavy with foundations made up of lawyers, managers and consultants.  Making up supposed non profit foundations who were supposed to only exist to manage funding. "Sit back and let us manage all of the bureacracy we're going to introduce into your project". Many of these are staffed with corporate reps - so not just taking donations - who then steer the project to ensure their employers demands are met.

So make no mistake about it, Debian leaving X is for specific political reasons and not due to X's ownership' political affiliation or track record with regards to employees fair treatment and working conditions. Debian and the Linux Foundation still willingly take money from Microsoft - a corporation hell bent on infiltrating and destroying any credible alternatives to its own products.

@zapper, your post #167, is something akin to guesswork and you seem to view security and privacy as factors which can be measured in %. This not the case.  Saying something like "I have achieved 95% security on my system" is more or less the same as saying you don't know how secure it actually is, but fingers crossed.

You could have "95%" of "security" and that 5% you neglected could be by far the worst flaw with a known exploit, hence the logical fallacy in that approach.

Microcode updates are released by the vendor of the CPU to fix flaws in the CPU. If you don't install them, the system is potentially vulnerable. If you're concerned about privacy, well you already went out and bought an x86 PC which is designed for MS Windows and Windows users and contains dubious tech such as the IME.

The x86 platform is one that uses a lot of system firmware, much of that closed source like the hardware itself. Most of that firmware, as I and many others have advised countless times over the years, is already flashed to the device itself. Getting rid of superfluous firmware provided with the Linux kernel, or disabling e.g. an integrated Broadcom netextreme device so as to dispose of the firmware, will only give you some "feel good". It's not tackling the real problem.

"Open hardware" is a nice ideal, but being realistic about it, that's a long way off and niche non x86  hardware is too expensive for most people. I remember years ago, there were hopes with platforms such as Raspberry Pi, but that turned into a Broadcom firmware based disaster. Who remembers their "we have taken the decision to trust Microsoft" statement?

Maintainers of Linux distributions can't do much about firmware, if hardware vendors designed their products in that way and said maintainers want to support the platform in question.

@Ron, I see you've identified yourself and saved us all the trouble.  Thanks.

@greenjeans, yes I understand what you're trying to do and I won't comment on that, other than to highlight the obvious difference between running services and installation size. Linux distributions have to suit a wide userbase, hence a lot is provided. Otherwise the distribution only suits one individuals use case.

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Personally I believe Devuan spawned a lot of small derivative hobby projects early on, and not enough "core" maintainers to keep things moving. The idealogues which the project picked up along the way haven't helped the project's image or it's ability to attract new people to do the work either. Sadly we live in a world where marketing seems to count more than ever. It's about challenging perceptions.

In my view Devuan needs to promote itself better, but also some of the users of this site need to consider how their behaviour reflects on the Devuan project as a whole. We all know what systemd is about, but criticism needs to be fact basd and limited to where it is relevant. All too often I have seen "systemd is svchost" or "systemd is an MS registry" which are totally false statenents which only serve to perpetuate the stereotype of "systemd haters" as a clueless, kneejerk, lunatic fringe, unworthy of consideration.

This seems offtopic, but some seem to think they are entitled to an i386 OS, maintained and developed for free.  Unfortunately that's not how it works. Big corporations such as MS kept x86_32 alive because it was in their business interests to do so. Unlike the OpenBSD project, MS had the resources and developers to do this. This was out of necessity - i.e. due to the very large number of devices still out there at the time, which could potentially have become Linux machines if MS had moved fully to 64 bit (as Intel famously attempted with IA64).

https://www.openbsd.org/i386.html

https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386/
(And by 15.0-release i386 will be unsupported)

Support for the platform is on the decline due to the declining numbers of machines still in use.  CPUs of the current platform, amd64, have been in production for over 20 years.

As to systemd files in Devuan, the project's standpoint is correct: Packages will come with harmless bits and pieces, such as unit files, which are not worth the trouble removing. If someone regards those files as being equivalent to systemd being installed, then you probably can't help them, as they are likely a) misinformed,  b) ideologically and emotionally driven and c) don't have the technical aptitude to learn and correct their misapprehension. If you don't like what's on offer, you aquire the skills and build your own. If you lack the skills to do this, then you either pay someone who can or you just use what's on offer.

Just need to get a bucketload of money from somewhere and we're good to go...

Someone has to volunteer and step up to do the work to maintain an i386 or other obsolete architecture OS. Charities may provide obsolete computers to the developing world, but they don't provide or maintain the OS.

Soon there will be tons of old amd64 hardware up for grabs, quite ironically thanks to Windows 11. At that point any perceived problems with phasing out i386 will be much smaller, decisions much easier for those maintaining an OS.

The real issue here, is the prevalence of IME/PSP in newer amd64 CPUs along with faux security features such as Secureboot, TPM chips, and as time goes on the choice is getting much narrower to the point where the x86 platform is no longer a viable choice for anyone who values privacy. Make no mistake about it : MS and its OEM cartel were up to their necks in this mutual back scratching.

Intel walked away from spectre/meltdown with barely a scratch - fast forward to the present and it's going to sell a lot more CPUs thanks to MS Windows 11...

The sad reality is that the whole x86 platform is a lost cause and the key players in that platform are some of the biggest donors to the Linux kernel and are bankrolling and steering projects such as wayland, systemd and Debian.

The "deep state", has to be theoretical, in order to be the deep state...  you cannot prove it exists, even though there are several theories.  Yes there are theories, but most are what amounts to bullshit spread by the misinformed, or disinformation spread by "conspiracy theorists" wanting to make money out of gullible people / amass followers / all of the above.

It seems that you actually believe that the "deep state" and tech billionaires such as Bill Gates are "communists" (rather than capitalists).  You must have a very poor understanding of communism.  It appears to me that you are subscribing to the popular US idea of a "left", i.e. a left which isn't a left at all, but some form of "right wing authoritarian" politics.

The anti zionist conspiracy, fueled by the "Khazar hypothesis", has long since been dis-proven (via genetic testing) and has no basis at all.

I stopped reading there, as would most reasonably intelligently people.

Any "deep state actors" you may refer to aren't interested in this kind of group - in fact those kinds of groups, including far right, nationalist and white supremecist groups, are understood to be utilised and nurtured by theoretical deep states around the world.

This is likely a combination of paranoia, computer illiteracy, existing unrelated malware, the platform itself, i.e. server load, or those clients trying to connect using Tor Browser for example. You should examine the far more credible causes first.

That's a separate issue.  Unfortunately, as per my earlier post, you may have to install the nvidia proprietary driver.  To get stable performance, and working power management.

Sakura is a decent terminal emulator.  Unfortunately, I'm almost 99% certain it doesn't support pseudo transparency (just tested it here on FreeBSD 14.1 and it seems you need a compositor running).  Unless you're completely averse to compositors you could try xcompmgr, which is very lightweight and easy enough to configure in just a single command line to run from .xsession / .xinitrc.

@steve_v, yes apparrently the local package install has been a feature since APT 1.1 (released in 2015). You have to specify the full path or it searches a remote repository.   I didn't know about that one - dpkg always worked for me though I suppose.