Devuan Ceres is amazing and far more stable than any other "stable" desktop GNU/Linux distro I've tried. Been running it for two months straight without a single error (current kernel is the 5.8 branch), and in my experience, this showcases the best of both worlds (for stability and updates). I never liked doing major upgrades, anyway.

Thanks for the heads-up. I remember reading the thread before, but forgot about the pinning specifics for MX GNU/Linux. Nevertheless, the Systemd pinning is crucial when including repositories such as those in.

That's disappointing. I actually own a couple of Crucial MX500s, and they've yet to disappoint me in the two years I've been using them. Temperature spikes have never been an issue, and it's been a pretty bad summer in my area. The HP SSDs I've owned, however, were already having multiple bad sectors within a few months of using them. Now, those are the cheaply produced SSDs (not surprised, since HP is a shit brand).

I might try out a Kingston SSD next time. I do use their HyperX Fury line for DDR3 memory, which is pretty nice and fast.

Pretty cool, indeed. Great way to entice fans of Gentoo, Arch GNU/Linux, and other such distros to try out Devuan and see what it's all about.

The "unstable" Ceres is more stable than most other "stable" distros. Crazy world we live in.

The first three Bathory albums are simply masterpieces of black metal.

Currently have Saxon's Metalhead blasting out of these speakers.

Yes, I'm updating using the first method (except the third line, which I see will remove a couple of Python packages).

# apt full-upgrade
The following packages will be REMOVED:
jack libpython-dbg libpython-dev python python-all python-all-dbg python-all-dev python-cddb python-dbg python-dev python-eyed3 python-magic python-ogg python-pathlib python-pyvorbis python2-dbg python2-dev

Not long after I posted this thread, I saw that the compiler packages mentioned up above become possible to upgrade. I upgraded without a single problem.

That's good news, indeed. I also use that panel plugin, which I had to compile myself and copy the two files (both the function and the launcher) across my machines. I look forward to seeing it become a binary package, which is just not fair to those who like Xfce, but don't want to use PulseAudio. ALSA has proven itself time after time to be a simple, reliable sound server. Works just fine for people working with audio recordings.

Looks good to me.

Yes, they are VeraCrypt volumes.

And, if a moderator wants to split these posts into a separate thread, go ahead.

Don't overwhelm yourself with learning command lines. Just keep being patient and try different things. See what the terminal is spitting out and try to to apply changes. At the same time, launch GUIs via terminals to keep track of errors and other suggestions. Optionally, look into security hardening tools (e.g. Lynis) for tips on proper Chmod usage in directories and files, essential privacy steps, and so on.

It also helps to learn the ways of other package managers, as well as compiling from source. APT is great and I like it more than Pacman and Portage, but learning those and other distros' methods of managing packages can help brush up on your knowledge of GNU/Linux.

Refracta is just too damn good to pass up. I heard of Devuan back in January 2018 via Distrochooser (I wanted a Debian-based distro that respected me, and Devuan was ranked on top) and tried it from time to time, but could never get a feel for it. ASCII was just not that pleasant, due to metapackage inconsistencies.

Things finally took a sharp turn for the better with Beowulf, but I still felt that something was missing. That's when I decided to go with one off the list, and Refracta looked to be the most attractive derivative of them all. Right off the bat, it just worked for me. I liked that GUI text editors such as Geany were included, and rather than PulseAudio bullshit for sound, I got ALSA, which has NEVER failed on me, no matter what hardware problems were experienced.

I personally believe that Refracta is what the main Devuan should have been more like, since I just don't like Poettering shitware of any kind. Regardless, any of those derivatives will still take you straight to Devuan. It's a much looser distinction than, say, GNU/Linux Mint and Ubuntu (since they are both alike and unalike for different reasons).

Runit is excellent and can already be used with Devuan since Beowulf.

Here's a quick guide: