I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

jacksprat · 2021-03-04 20:29:45

I just installed devuan 3.1.0 from

devuan_beowulf_3.1.0_amd64-netinstall.iso

selecting runit as the init system and xfce4 as the desktop. Everything went well, except that it didn't reboot at the end [just froze]; no worry, power cycle brought up a login screen. So far, I haven't even installed a firewall, so unplugged from router for now [unless installing packages].

My "daily driver" distro is Void Linux with runit, lxdm, openbox, tint2, lxterminal, leafpad etc along with custom iptables firewall, custom bwrap+firefox. I can impose these preferences on Devuan [Devuan now has the required packages], with the "slim->lxdm" as a risky change.

I will run Devuan on my spare computer to see how it behaves.

jacksprat

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-04 20:38:19

jacksprat wrote:

So far, I haven't even installed a firewall, so unplugged from router for now [unless installing packages].

Your router already acts as a hardware firewall (NAT) so you only need a firewall on the system if you're running any services that listen to ports.

Check for those with

# netstat -tunlp

That command is supplied by the net-tools package.

If you do need a firewall then I would recommend nftables over iptables. Devuan beowulf already uses an nftables backend for iptables by default anyway but the nftables syntax is much easier to read and write so you're probably better off just transferring over to that wholesale.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-03-04 20:39:27)

jacksprat · 2021-03-04 21:44:49

Thanks. My router is a bit too permissive for my liking. I prefer to use a custom firewall derived from the work of Amaril Dojr [now called Amanda Santini on github]. I want to stop all unsolicited outgoing traffic [javascript scripts phoning home]. I sort of "get" iptables [past 25 years] and I'm a bit too old [and lazy] to learn about nftables [unless the Poettering-tendency force complience].

netstat showed: cupsd, saned, cups-browsed, avahi-daemon and dhclient; only the last of these will remain once I have replaced xfce4->openbox.

jacksprat

Micronaut · 2021-03-13 03:12:30

Hey, I just installed 3.1 yesterday from the devuan_beowulf_3.1.0_amd64-desktop.iso rather than a net install. Since it's so new, there isn't much to download to be up-to-date. But since this has kicked off a discussion of new install issues, I'll post here.

Over-all the install was very smooth, which is indeed 'cool'... Most things 'just work', but there were some glitches. Current gripes:

* multiple desktops on the same system:
Since I have been avoiding KDE and Gnome like the plague since their respective 4.x bloat disasters, I wanted to see what MATE and Cinnamon were like. XFCE is my favorite desktop right now, so I like that it is default in Devuan. But if KDE and Gnome can go insane, who knows if XFCE might also? Though I haven't had time to experiment with them yet, I'm still configuring XFCE to my preferred state, I noticed something odd after installing all three. Some of the component accessories, like gnome terminal and the Pluma editor, have 'bled through' into my XFCE install, popping up by default instead of the XFCE equivalents. Shouldn't the elements of the different desktop systems be kept together, and separate from each other, by default? Seems kinda sloppy to have these parts appearing in XFCE.

* Network manager and WICD and Bluetooth?

This is a desktop with no bluetooth or Wifi devices attached. Why would I get WICD and Bluetooth just automatically added to my system? I'm considering uninstalling them, but am a bit concerned that there might be some sort of tangled dependency that pulled them in. So these do more than just service external devices that I do not have?

* sensors and gkrellm
This is always a problem with every new install. Some of the hardware sensors work, some do not. Even after running sensors-detect. I've got all the temp sensors working, even the HD with the hddtemp daemon. But the fan sensors do not work, and they did work in ascii. But it's now been so long that I don't recall what I did, if anything special, to get the fan sensors working. Weirdly, the entries for both the cpu and gpu fan are there in the fan sector, but if I check them there is no readout. So something is 'partially' working in that it thinks there are sensors but can't read them.

* gkrellweather
This is not fixed in beowulf. The script now works, so they have at least updated that for the new location of the NOAA weather data. But the default location of that script in the config file is still wrong. I had to edit and change "/usr/local/share/gkrellm/GrabWeather" to "/usr/share/gkrellm/GrabWeather" and will have to do that again if I ever change the config because it will still write that wrong location when it re-writes the file. Why couldn't someone fix this very simple thing?

* stubby
One of my major motivations for upgrading to beowulf was that stubby was finally available by default and I could just install DNS-over-TLS cleanly and quickly. It seems to work, but I don't know how to verify that. How do you test that your system is using TLS to connect to the DNS providers?

Since I'm just getting started, there will probably be more discoveries. But these are the current outstanding issues.

ralph.ronnquist · 2021-03-13 05:26:42

How do you test that your system is using TLS to connect to the DNS providers?

DNS over TLS has the standard port 853 rather than port 53 for "traditional DNS", so you might verify with tcpdump or similar.

jacksprat · 2021-03-13 15:19:52

Micronaut: "* Network manager and WICD and Bluetooth?"

wicd manages both wired and wireless networks. If you click on the XFCE toolbar icon it will open the wicd control window. My laptop has both, but I switch off wifi as my neighbours houses are too close.

Coming from a VoidLinux background, I prefer wicd to NetworkManager, even though the latter has nmcli command-line controls.

fsmithred · 2021-03-13 15:53:46

Multiple desktop environments doesn't work as easily as it used to. There are more dependency conflicts. You might have an easier time if you avoid metapackages. Instead of task-xfce-desktop or any of the others that get installed from the installation isos, install xfce4 or even install the individual parts. Same goes for the other desktops. That way you can resolve conflicts individually as they come up. Also, installing without Recommends will help with this.

If you just want to test different desktops, it might be cleaner to test in a virtual machine.

Default applications in the system are controlled by the alternatives system. Generally, the last app of any particular type that gets installed is the one that is preferred. See man update-alternatives and ls -l /etc/alternatives/ for more information.

n-m vs. wicd: In this case, it's the desktop environments that pulled them in. You could probably avoid this by installing things in pieces as described above.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-13 17:05:04

Micronaut wrote:

* Network manager and WICD and Bluetooth?

If you don't want them running then disable them:

# apt install sysv-rc-conf
# sysv-rc-conf

Micronaut · 2021-03-15 02:08:48

Merely disabling wicd with this handy utility -- glad I chose sysv for my init system! -- does not work. I get error messages about the GUI not working until the daemon is restarted. So I just used 'aptitude remove wicd'. Bluetooth is OK with being disabled this way.

Googling around, I learned that putting "acpi_enforce_resources=lax" on my GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line allows more sensors to be seen. The sensor actually named cpu fan is still not showing any data, but six others are now visible to Gkrellm and three of them show actual live data. Now if I could just figure out which is which...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-15 18:21:53

Micronaut wrote:

Merely disabling wicd with this handy utility -- glad I chose sysv for my init system! -- does not work. I get error messages about the GUI not working until the daemon is restarted.

Hmm. Disable the tray application then:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cp /etc/xdg/autostart/wicd-tray.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
echo 'Hidden=true' >> ~/.config/autostart/wicd-tray.desktop

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#1 2021-03-04 20:29:45

I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#2 2021-03-04 20:38:19

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#3 2021-03-04 21:44:49

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#4 2021-03-13 03:12:30

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#5 2021-03-13 05:26:42

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#6 2021-03-13 15:19:52

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#7 2021-03-13 15:53:46

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#8 2021-03-13 17:05:04

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#9 2021-03-15 02:08:48

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

#10 2021-03-15 18:21:53

Re: I just installed Devuan 3.1.0 Beowulf and it's cool

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