New ExeGNU ISO's out now.. ascii i386 & amd64, also a "testing" (beowulf) amd64

The beowulf "testing" ISO was unfortunately not possible to get <700MB without losing too much functionality. If you use it, know that you must maintain it yourself, it's probably already outdated!

Thanks to all who helped make to make this possible and in advance to anyone who wants to test it.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/exegnulinux/files/

Great work fsmithred, thanks for the latest Refracta ISO!

I made a rebuild. Used  xz compression for the initd's, removed initrd.img_pre-snapshot from the original fs root, removed .pyo and .pyc files  everywhere (they get regenerated). Same (as far as I know) package list, no other changes except to add the old refracta-lang live-config script which still works (sorts locale and keyboard simply)

Rebuilt iso is down to 687MB! The bad news is that won't be enough to get a similar beowulf ISO <700MB

Testing using installation's grub menu to boot the iso on HD..

su -c 'youtube-dl --update
Password:

Updating to version 2019.01.10 ...

Simple as that..

Thanks again fsmithred for testing this (and the adjustments to refractainstaller) and to all others who took an interest in TDE. A new iso with those points fixed is now posted.

Well, my apologies for not posting lately nor having any spare time at all for this stuff, "real life" situations here have been ******* relentless..

There shouldn't be any real problem for anyone already running the Exegnu Jessie to dist-upgrade in the usual way. Nor should installing TDE to a base Devuan be difficult. You might however be best to install just the base and build it from there; the "metapackage" is, IMO, bloated. TDE can run with other DE/WM's installed (I mostly prefer TDE but also use xfce and openbox)

Anyway, I did a 64-bit Exegnu Ascii live image with the latest TDE. Built it fom a fresh devuan bootstrap so it should be cruft-free (jessie dist upgrade leaves lots). There is a script to do the entire job that way, if anyone is interested (i.e. direct from bootstrap unlike refractasnapshot)

To my surprise it came out <700MB with mostly the same package set as before except Audacity, which seems to now bring qt4/5 deps.

Previous images used some 3rd party no-systemd packages and some I built myself. This one, I'm pleased to say, is just Devuan and TDE. A few custom extras (rather than alternatives) are included e.g. exegnu-installer and the latest Refracta tools.

I packaged and used consolekit2 before but now elogind is working fine, including suspend for user. I reluctantly had to give up on excluding libsystemd0.

I haven't tested it it much, all I got now is one old intel core2 laptop. Anyone who wants to test, thanks in advance, please say what is wrong, what is missing, what doesn't work right (or just what does!)

Finally, special thanks to fsmithred (for your amazing work with live-image development), Adam Borowski (for all your systemd-free packaging in the early days), the TDE project (who forked kde3, which was abandoned for something unrecognisably different) and most notably the perseverance with init freedom, of all involved in Devuan.. and for this excellent Ascii release.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/exegnulinux/files/iso/

Devuan+TDE user here. My system(s) originate from (Devuan-) debootstrap.

I have clearlooks-phenix-purpy-theme and mate-icon-theme installed but /usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/emblems is empty. Am I missing a package?

Same machine, got xfce4 installed and running now. Using gvfs from angband.pl (it doesn't depend libsystemd0) and consolekit2. I know from before that combination works with full functionality for user usb handling and shutdown/suspend/reboot.

With (e)udev : plugged USB appears on desktop and in thunar, correctly labelled (“sandisk”), can mount/umount/eject normally, as user

With vdev: Appears as “64 GB Volume”, No label. Cannot mount as user (except with pmount), as if it's seen as a fixed disk.

With udev:

:~$ /usr/sbin/hwinfo --usb|grep "/dev/sd"
  Device File: /dev/sdb (/dev/sg2)
  Device Files: /dev/sdb, /dev/disk/by-id/usb-_USB_Flash_Memory_0013729B6877EB8156390022-0:0, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

:~$ dmesg| tail -n 1|grep removable
[ 2058.054823] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

With vdev, hwinfo shows less complete detection:

:~$ /usr/sbin/hwinfo --usb|grep "/dev/sd"
  Device File: /dev/sdb

:~$ dmesg| tail -n 1|grep removable
[  183.446863] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

I can't find any way to mark the above in a code box..

Could it have something to do with the splash image? In the ISO, it's png, 24bpp RGB.

"vbeinfo" (or is it "videoinfo"?) at grub prompt might give some clue..

Just noticed, I forgot to use  "-isohybrid-gpt-basdat" in the xorriso command. That's probably why the isohbrid failed for efi. I'll post a new ISO later but I don't have any way of testing it.

For the record, http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Isohybrid explains why (and gdisk shows if the image has a valid gpt part, it didn't).

I don't need to do anything about "union=aufs", it's already there in the cfg files. Except to remind anyone interested who didn't know or forgot, the new live-boot default is overlay (but can also do aufs), aufs is removed fom newer kernels, older kernels can't do overlay. Best to specify union type if you use a custom cfg file.

New Exe GNU/Linux live-images for i386 and amd64 are now available:

http://exegnulinux.net/downloads
https://sourceforge.net/projects/exegnulinux/

These ISO's are originally built from a Devuan bootstrap. Apart from TDE (Trinity Desktop), consolekit2 and a few custom applications (e.g. installer) they are current Devuan Jessie. There is now less need for 3rd party "nosystemd" builds. TDE does not need gvfs (nor anything else GTK).

The installer should support uefi, this is not much tested so thanks in advance to anyone who does.

Thanks to Devuan and to TDE for making this possible. Special thanks to fsmithred (Refracta). Although refractasnapshot was not used to produce this, the research efforts revolving around Refracta towards a systemd-free live environment have been of essential value and influence. Refracta tools are included here but not much tested yet with TDE.

BTW, for the record, Refracta probably was the first proper Devuan (-derivative) live-image. My TDE builds were heavily reliant on 3rd party system packages in Devuan's early days and TDE itself is not actually in Devuan repos.

There are new isos ready now but I can't upload them till a server problem gets fixed. The currently available isos do dist-upgrade without a problem.

The new isos have less 3rd party packages, a uefi-capable installer and Refracta tools preinstalled.  They are originally built from a Devuan debootstrap.

At Devuan's beginning (and shortly before) we relied heavily on temporary hacks, 3rd party repos and custom package recompilations. Much of this was done in conjunction with Refracta (thanks fsmithred). Devuan's public presence was only IRC, heavily spammed by systemd fanboys. I had never properly compiled a deb package before, had to learn quick else accept systemd.

Now Devuan is almost complete, only a few 3rd-party package recompilations are still needed.

Exegnu was actually the first Debian live image with Trinity desktop and possibly the first systemd-free Jessie image. It's base switched to Devuan from day one, therefore was probably the first Devuan-based live-image (or was it Refracta ?)

Whether or not you get on with exegnu depends if you get on with Trinity Desktop. TDE advantages are active development, no systemd dependence, no gtk3 dependence, ram usage comparable to xfce4, old-style amarok...

I don't know why this never got noticed by Devuan. Probably because I'm not very good with updating documentation. It has also an outdated Distrowatch listing as a Debian derivative.