Technically the refractra based installer that is included on the Live DVD/USB Image is a GUI based installer, though it is terrible/confusing compared to the Ubuntu/Mint GUI installer.

When starting the Debian/Devuan normal installer (full or net-install), there is an option for "Graphical Installer", which is functionally identical to the NCurses "DOS knockoff", but it looks prettier. Functionally, this installer is perfectly fine and visually the graphical version is also fine. Every step is clear and well documented and it's not possible to reach the end of the installer without having a working system.

Wifi doesn't work? Yeah, welcome to the difference between using Debian rather than Ubuntu: Debian has always been and still is a chore to configure, which is the whole reason distros like Ubuntu exist. Devuan is Debian without Systemd, not Ubuntu without Systemd.

Ps. I've been using Linux since 1998. In all that time, I would say that Mint 17.3 XFCE was the pinnacle of Linux for me, because it was a normal GNU/Linux system that "just worked". Sadly Mint 17 is no longer supported and it doesn't work on my new laptop, so I have reluctantly moved on. Devuan being Debian and Debian being what it is, it has taken me a few weeks to configure Devuan 3 to function essentially the same as my old favorite Mint 17. For me, a person who used to use plain old Debian before he used Mint 17, it was an effort I didn't mind undertaking. I certainly appreciate (and prefer!) the "it just works" mindset, but new versions of Mint use Systemd and I'd rather not, so I really don't have a problem stepping back into a base Debian system and configuring it myself. For me it's worth the effort, but I can completely understand how it may not be worth the effort to someone else.

I am not sure what you mean by "EFI variables", I'm still living in BIOS land, stumbling through EFI on my laptop... but if you are referring to the entries made in the boot options list, those can be removed using Windows command prompt. This was not obvious to me when the BIOS of my Levovo 100e laptop refused to delete them...

1. Boot Windows or a Windows Recovery Mode Image (disk or usb).

2. Open the command prompt as admin.

3. Run BCDEDIT

bcdedit /enum firmware

This provides a list of entries you see in your bios boot list.

4. Remove the entries you don't want using,

bcdedit delete IDENTIFIER_NAME

where IDENTIFIER_NAME is the name of the entry you no longer want.

I got it all working! Yay!

It turned out that the paths to the various bits of GIMP needed to made absolute rather than relative. As such, I moved from using the compressed AppImage file to the plain AppImage folder, which I stuck in my home directory.

For example, the default path that is set relative to the AppImage doesn't work,

../../usr/lib/gimp/2.0/modules

where as the full path does work,

/home/rob/bin/GIMP-2.8.10/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/modules

These paths can be set using the Edit > Preferences > Folders UI or by editing the file ~/.gimp-2.8/gimprc.

So as a full run-down on how to make GIMP 2.8 work in Devuan Beowulf:

1. Clone pkg2appimage and install its dependencies.

2. Build the GIMP AppImage.

bash -ex ./pkg2appimage recipes/gimp.yml

3. Copy (and rename) the GIMP.AppDir, which contains all the files needed to run GIMP 2.8, to somewhere useful on you drive, such as /opt/gimp.

4. Edit the gimp.desktop file so that can find the gimp executable.

Exec=/opt/gimp/bin/GIMP-2.8.10/usr/bin/gimp-2.8

5. Open GIMP by running /opt/gimp/AppImage and close it again. This will create all the files in /home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8, one of which you'll edit in the next step.

6. Set the paths in the /home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/gimprc file.

(plug-in-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/plug-ins:/opt/gimp/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins")
(module-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/modules:/opt/gimp/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/modules")
(interpreter-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/interpreters:/opt/gimp/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/interpreters")
(environ-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/environ:/opt/gimp/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/environ")
(brush-path "/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/brushes:/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/brushes")
(brush-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/brushes")
(dynamics-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/dynamics:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/dynamics")
(dynamics-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/dynamics")
(pattern-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/patterns:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/patterns")
(pattern-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/patterns")
(palette-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/palettes:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/palettes")
(palette-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/palettes")
(gradient-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/gradients:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/gradients")
(gradient-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/gradients")
(tool-preset-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/tool-presets:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/tool-presets")
(tool-preset-path-writable "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/tool-presets")
(font-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/fonts:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/fonts")
(theme-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/themes:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/themes")
(script-fu-path "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gimp-2.8/scripts:/opt/gimp/usr/share/gimp/2.0/scripts")

7. Add menu entry for GIMP 2.8 (using menulibre) where the executable points to /opt/gimp/AppRun.

You can copy this personal menu file, located in /home/YOUR_USERNAME/.local/share/applications/menulibre-gimp-2.desktop to the system folder /usr/share/applications, so that it's available to all users.

8. Go forth and create with the best version of GIMP!

That's all I want.

Debian is the root of many distros, because it's such a stable base that is easy to add layers of customization onto until one reaches their desired results. Want minimal? Start with a netinstall base system and add only what you want - heck, even remove some stuff after first boot if you'd like. Want a Ubuntu clone? Well, that's possible too with some effort. And anything in between. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy for new people, but Debian has never been easy for new people; If you want "easy" or specific to your personal needs/desires, you should use something else.  That's the entire reason why derivative distros exist.

Debian is pretty cool, but it was cooler without Systemd, hence Devuan. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

----

That said, obviously the direction and oversight of Debian has changed, else we wouldn't be here, so I think it would make sense if the spirit and direction of Devuan was the same as Debian's was back in the days of Wheezy and earlier. For instance, if the next version of Debian was entirely based on Snap packages, I think that a Devuan version of that would go over like a lead balloon with most of us. I like the standard library/binary/file management system of Linux, it's kinda what makes GNU/Linux, well GNU/Linux, to me anyway. So if new Debian did away with it and Devuan followed suit, because "Devuan is Debian without Systemd", then that I guess would be the end of my use of either project. Not for some philosophical reasons, just because container madness is not what I want from a GNU/Linux system.

But what I want doesn't matter; Devuan is Debian without Systemd.

Not my desktop, rather my new custom SLiM theme,

Here's a blog post I made about it (my site is not monetized).

Here's my desktop itself,

XFCE with the Clearlooks theme, Gnome Brave icons, and the Agualemon window manager theme. I happen to like skeuomorphism, tyvm!

Great to hear about FF not needing PA in Devuan. Thanks for that. In the case of my laptop, I can live with PA, but on my desktop it has always caused audio drop-out problems when recording in Audacity in literally every distro I have ever run on that machine. Rambling side note: it's sad that the Windows drivers included with my K-World TV tuner card never allowed me to use the RCA audio jacks to record audio, but it has always worked just fine in Linux.

I don't know why using the older wifi firmware package works during the installer's check for network firmware, but it does. I simply stuck it in the same directory with the other firmware and magically it was detected where the normally provided package was not. I don't know where to look for log/error messages for that, so I can't provide anymore details.

Sorry for complaining about Debian problems. I tend to agree with Darry that they just don't care.

Just to be clear, I like and will continue to use Devuan 3 on my laptop. It works like Linux should work and I appreciate that.

Pulse Audio:
/etc/pulse/client.conf.d/00-disable-autospawn.conf
- comment out the following line and reboot:
autospawn=no

Found that elsewhere and it worked for me.

How bizarre, I came here to post the same thing!

Thank You!

I have ASCII on my desktop, but I tend to only use the desktop for Windows games (in Windows) these days, so I haven't done much Devuaning on it. I spend most of my time on my laptop, which is a Lenovo Ideapad 100e 81CY "Winbook" (4 core Celeron, 4GB RAM, 128GB EMMC) that I picked up earlier this year for a whole $270 CAD. I really like it for every day computing, retro computing, modest games, etc., but even with Win10 Pro it's a constant chore to make the most of this modest hardware. I think we all know that's not a problem with Devuan! Sadly, I was never able to get ASCII to boot this here 100e for some reason. It just wouldn't do it. Ubuntu, PopOS, and Manjaro worked fine, but I don't really like any of them for various reasons, so until Beowulf I was using Win10 all the time.

Anyway, Devuan is awesome. It runs fantastic and really allows me to make the most of my laptop (it's only using 912MB RAM writing this with Firefox). Nothing like 7 to 10 hours of computing on light, durable, real x86 laptop (that's faster than my old Core2 Quad desktop!).

I have, but they don not appear to solve the issue. Setting "Double Click Time" to the max of 2000ms doesn't help. It seems to be a "debounce" issue, where the system is picking up multiple clicks from a single click for some reason. Interesting that it didn't happen when using an older drive; Perhaps the debounce code is depends on delay caused by loading the menu and its icons - this would be a poor way to program such a thing, but it would explain why the issue appears on a faster drive than a slower one. I'll check the source later this week I guess.

Having just reinstalled Devuan yesterday, these are the games that I have installed at the moment.

Sometimes I play  other open source games, such as Super Maryo Chronicles, Ardentryst, Open Arena, and the games/mods/projects I have made as well. I don't bother with Wine, because it only takes a few seconds to boot into Windows which gives 100% performance in Windows games with 0% of the effort!

Even fundamental stuff, like moving a floated selection that is in a layer "behind" another is impossible, if you can't "click through" the upper layer onto a visible portion of your floated selection. This the big one that makes 2.10 "unusable" for me, because I rely on that feature of GIMP a bajillion times a day... In 2.8, you can simply click the layer you want to work in, square select where you know the object is, float the selection, and click it to drag it even though it's completely hidden by upper layers. This is particularly important when you're using layer-level effects that don't show when the layer visibility is off... Anyway, that's "broke as fuck", as the kids would say.

So very much of that sort of thing, plus new bugs, and some pretty wicked awful performance degradation... 2.8 is actually pretty good, if you count thousands of hours of use in Linux and Windows without crashes or any major frustrations (I can't actually recall any frustrations I had with 2.8 at the moment...).

*sigh* Thank you for listening!

Thanks. I'll change it.

Edit:
I changed the sources.list to the correct version for Devuan. Updated, fortunately nothing broke. Chalk that up to it being years since I have used a backport of anything and following a guide for Debian lol... Knowledge, use it or lose it!