I'll try to expain for you folks who aren't getting it. If you install a desktop environment from the installer iso, it uses a metapackage such as task-xfce-desktop or other desktop, which pulls in all parts of the chosen DE plus all other desktop applications. Trying to remove some parts of that will often result in the whole desktop being removed.

If you start with a minimal system, you can add the parts of the desktop that you want along with the specific applications that you want and have a leaner system than you would get with the task-* package.

Example: How do you install kde without getting libreoffice or gimp? Partial answer: You don't install task-kde-desktop.

$ apt depends task-kde-desktop
task-kde-desktop
  Depends: tasksel (= 3.73devuan1)
  Depends: task-desktop
  Depends: kde-standard
 |Depends: lightdm
 |Depends: slim
  Depends: sddm
  Recommends: kdeaccessibility
  Recommends: orca
  Recommends: gimp
  Recommends: libreoffice-writer
  Recommends: libreoffice-calc
  Recommends: libreoffice-impress
  Recommends: libreoffice-plasma
  Recommends: libreoffice-kf5
  Recommends: libreoffice-help-en-us
  Recommends: mythes-en-us
  Recommends: hunspell-en-us
  Recommends: hyphen-en-us
  Recommends: print-manager
 |Recommends: <time-daemon>
    chrony
    ntpsec
    openntpd
  Recommends: ntpsec-ntpdate

About that size issue...
I poked around a bit. Most of the difference is in /lib/modules and most of that is drivers. libre has more directories and files there than debian and all the .ko files in the debian kernel are xz-compressed. That accounts for around 200mb difference.

Update. If I downgrade to the previous version of mount, the isos boot. (i.e. they can loop-mount filesystem.squashfs)

mount, fdisk libfdisk1 and uuid-runtime were all downgraded from 2.41-5devuan1 to 2.38.1-5+deb12u3devuan1

I filed a bug report against mount - https://bugs.devuan.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=892

I think you make a good case for turning mdadm off in the live isos. Easy enough to do.
In /etc/default/mdadm

# START_DAEMON:
#   should mdadm start the MD monitoring daemon during boot?
START_DAEMON=false

If you need mdadm in the live session, turn it on with /etc/init.d/mdadm start
Now all I gotta do is remember to put it in the release notes.

Might be better to make a hook script so it could be turned on or off at the boot command. (talking to myself now)

"su" vs. "su -" problem? Those usually give you a "command not found" error. More likely the environment issue (root vs. user)

If you want to be able to run root programs on the user's desktop like you used to do before su got moved into util-linux, do this:

echo "Always_set_path yes" >> /etc/default/su

Then log out and log in using "su" and compare your PATH to what it was before. (or try to run a graphical app as root)

Feel free to use this. No gui stuff. (I actually dissected it out of a gui app. You'll recognize some of it.) And yes, this uses dd.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# iso2usb.sh
#set -x
#
# Run this script from the directory that contains your .iso files.
#

blocksize="1M"

[[ $(id -u) -eq 0 ]] || { echo -e "\n\t You need to be root!\n" ; exit 1 ; }

usbdevlist=$(/usr/sbin/hwinfo --usb --short | awk '/dev\/sd/ {print $1}')
usbdevfulllist=$(/usr/sbin/hwinfo --usb --short | awk '/dev\/sd/ {print $0}')

	echo -e "\n\tLIST OF REMOVABLE DRIVES\n${usbdevfulllist}\n${sdfulllist}\n${cdromfulllist}\n\nSelect a device:"
	select opt in $usbdevlist ; do
		device=$(echo "$opt" | awk '{ print $1 }')
		break
	done

if [[ -z "$device" ]] ; then
	echo "No device was found."
	exit 0
fi

echo -e "\n\tSelect the image file.\n"
select file in *.iso *.img ; do
	echo -e "\n$file"
	break
done

size=$(ls -lh $file | awk '{ print $5 }' | sed -e 's/M//')

if echo "$size" | grep -q G ; then
	size="$(echo "$size" | sed -e 's/\.//' -e 's/G//')00"
fi

echo "Size is ${size}M"

if echo "$size" | grep -q K ; then
	echo "Out of range units"
	exit 1
fi

echo -e "\n\tCopy $file to $device?\n\n\tThe command will be:\n\tdd if=$file | pv -s ${size}M | dd of=$device bs=${blocksize}\n\n"
echo -e " Press ENTER to continue or ctrl-c to abort."
read -p " "

dd if="$file" | pv -s ${size}M | dd of="$device" bs="$blocksize"
sync

exit 0

Oops! My EEE has a 128G ssd, so I didn't think a lot about disk space. I recently added a 32G sd card so I could run excalibur without losing my daedalus install (or my win XP install which I keep only for nostalgia). The EEE sees it as a usb storage device, so it's bootable.

In the live isos, the memtest images are in the /live directory with the kernel and initrd. That's where you'll find it if you mount the iso on a running system. If you boot the iso, look in /run/live/medium/live (I think that's right.) Poke around and you'll find the boot menus - isolinux/isolinux.cfg and boot/grub/grub.cfg.

I think the background color in openbox is built into the binary. I couldn't find a way to change it. Two ways I know to have a bg image in openbox are with spacefm or feh. I seem to recall some gaseous element name for bg images with a window manager - I think it's nitrogen but it might be oxygen.

Good find. I'll have to remember to play with that on a multi-boot live-usb that uses syslinux to see what it does.

I don't know if the .bin file is needed. I'll leave it for now and see if someone finds a case where that's the only one that works for them.

I'm pretty sure that everything in /run will be regenerated on reboot. If you changed permissions on the executables in /sbin, those won't revert. You should do that manually.

Instead of changing permissions, you could give your user sudo privs without password for just the required commands. Then you can use those commands in destkop launchers without having to enter a password.
I have something like this in /etc/sudoers.d/usercommands. (Hint: visudo /etc/sudoers.d/usercommands)

Cmnd_Alias	HALT = /sbin/shutdown, /sbin/halt, /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/reboot
Cmnd_Alias	NET = /sbin/ifconfig, /sbin/ifup, /sbin/ifdown

fred    ALL=NOPASSWD: HALT, NET

For brightness, your user can run xrandr.

# $monitor1 is the name of the connected monitor from xrandr without any options.
# $bright1 is a number between 0.0 and 1.0. 
xrandr --output $monitor1 --brightness "$bright1"

...sooner than I thought.

There are two memtest entries in the boot menus. One for memtest86+x64.efi and one for memtest86+x64.bin. Both appear in the legacy boot menu (isolinux) and the uefi boot menu (grub). I'm interested to hear which one works in which situations.

For me, just the .efi version works in both legacy and uefi boots. The .bin gives me some nice dot patterns that scroll off the screen to be replaced with black.

Excalibur desktop-live:
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_excalib … p-live.iso

Excalibur minimal-live:
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_excalib … l-live.iso

sha256sums:

d301d0e4eb31e7b4e8dee9cee5fdc9a74763d61ff95a1a18a456991905500206  devuan_excalibur_6.0-preview-2025-05-19_1437_amd64_desktop-live.iso

149e3538d01c76d8f6393fcc871167f221e2582e0dca3221ed8750b8bf01e27e  devuan_excalibur_6.0-preview-2025-05-19_1919_amd64_minimal-live.iso