I've forgotten, was it stretch that introduced systemd?  I've been falling back to jessie for years.

I recall having gotten Ubuntu oneiric (11.10) tweaked up just as i wanted it, then whatever their next version was, it went from their old startup code (maybe that was "upstart"?) straight to the dogs, and i think that was when they introduced systemd.

Trainees have to gain experience, but i hope the next set is less destructive in their enthusiasm.

i'm not sure that's how i did it, but the date/time panel widget was adjusted to my preferred format, and Caja shows the date in my other preferred format.  No telling what other apps are doing, most of what i use isn't big on showing the date/time, and i don't think i went to it through that menu path.  shrug.

I'm not sure whether to be SMH or LMAO.  As i read your last two sentences, they come up semantically null:  devuan is debian so installing from either one gives the same code.  I installed through synaptic, using the default install repositories, and only removed the fake-cd one that pointed to the install USB stick.

You know, it really hurts to see what the computer industry has let itself become, for the sake of continually increasing quarter-over-quarter profits.  People who work in the industry and know what they're doing are still flogged along in the wrong direction by corporate drones more concerned with fashion than quality.  We had hopes back in the day; oh well.

In my case, since i'm offgrid, and cloud-effect often occurs in the afternoon, bumping the solar array voltage over its limit, my 110v AC has a tendency to cut out for 30 seconds until the solar controller has a chance to catch up.  Fortunately the modification i made to its charger cable, along with another gizmo, lets me run it on 12vDC and i've some of those outlets around.

I just wish i hadn't shorted whatever i shorted when making that modification, it had/has good battery life when combined with linux suspend.

I resolved the wifi-card issue by replacing the damn Broadcom chip with a generic Intel one, it was easy to replace and only cost about $12 or so.  As a result of that i can now run Devuan on it, as well as on my "windows box" a thinkpad t510.

Thanks to all who attempted to help.

Anyone who has an xps-13?  Ditch the Broadcom chip.

syscrh, thank you for the detailed information.  atm i'm trying to install ASCII on my xps-13, will see how that goes.  since the xps-13 supports touch, i'll try the graphics programs you mentioned.  as for the rest... first thing i have to do is get Chrome 70 installed on my samsung chromebook pro.  chromeOS is really not bad as far as functionality goes, but it has some issues.  we'll see how this install goes and i'll scratch my head lol.  thanks again.

Thing is, i'm really hooked on the drawing capabilities of Google Keep.  Is there anything like a "usable gimp with stylus support" available on linux?  Or laptops that are good for drawings?

Maybe i need to split off, get something like a Samsung Note for a phone, and a nice fast notebook for development.

Suggestions?

I've been known to let things limp along too.  I've also been known to go buy a new computer or phone
just because i want to.  It isn't as though i'm forced to Adult all the time, once you're retired you can
more or less do what you please, though i've been doing so much as-i-please lately that i have to Adult for
a while. <G>

Probably i'll just install as i would otherwise, once it's installed i can back it up with the other dozen or
so distros i have laying around on removable media.  An installed copy of linux is remarkably portable.
If i black out and end up with a new Surface device i'll have it ready to go.

I wonder if anybody else is sick of the keyboard/editor circus.  Between my Dell, my Chromebook, and
my Blackberry, i have 3 different keyboard layouts, and as a touch typist it makes me kind of nuts.

Presumably you mean after i've installed the OS from the .iso file referenced in some post above this one which i can't access at this point.   And after installing the recommended .iso file in some partition and
rebooting to run the newly installed OS.  At that point in the process i run the following commands to install the broadcom drivers.  If that is correct, then 'uname' should in some way correspond to the version number or codename of the version that you recommend.  i think that was the latest one, its name escapes me at present but will resurface immediately prior to its download. <g>

If i only have to boot it once after powering up that will be an order of magnitude better than ubuntu, and i'll omit the rant on that one.  for now.  the one on systemd and how it jammed up everyone's nose.

The deal with ncurses is that being an archaic interface is not the worst of it, the worst of it is the way PHP was basically subsumed for corporate profit and one has to use some PECL or something to install a version of the PHP/ncurses interface.  And at some version or other, variable naming was changed so that the ncurses interfaces no longer match, and nobody has bothered to fix it.  I doubt that anybody is even using it besides me, due to its limitations, but i have an extensive nautilus extension that does everything but unplug the kitchen sink, and i'm not about to waste time contributing to zend/whatever's profit, so the latest version of the PECL extension should imo determine the version number of a corresponding PHP.

I think few agree with the way i see things.  The project i'm currently working on will be largely proprietary because that is, in practical terms, the only way to ensure that a standard is followed.  At the same time it would save me a lot of work to pick up some copyable arithmetic routines, though it doesn't matter that much since that all has to follow a common interface to allow various arithmetic hardware to be used.

Dang, running on again, my bad.  Anyway i'll definitely check here for footprints before installing.  I expect it to be no big deal, and apologize for not realizing prior to spending a week in various hotels that simply plugging in a cable would do the trick. 

BTW, can anyone tell me what happened to the kind of discussions we used to have on usenet, last time i looked it was just a few trolls talking to itselves.

I think it doesn't much matter, it's primarily system-independent-C++ with a set of plugins per operating
system, until it's burned into rom and then the os becomes irrelevant.  Microsoft almost certainly has
some chicanery involved in the design of the new partition setup, efi i guess it was, that lets you define
your own architecture and lock the end-user out of anything else.

It's easy to forget details.  Carry on then, pip pip and cheerio, all that hooplah --

And thanks for running it down, i appreciate your help.

YES, that is exactly my situation.  I live in the mountains off-grid and the only internet access i have is a wifi hotspot on my cellphone.

Let me know if this POS will ever be usable by those without hardwired connections.

IMO the whole thing is absurd.  I know how good linux is, this is a build issue plain and simple.

When you fix it let me know which ISO file supposedly works.  TY