Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

lafat · 2025-12-16 02:46:40

Been with Devuan since Ascii. This version 6 Excalibur is such a great representation of the extremely poor quality control of Devuan nowadays. What a flop. What a sh*t show.

Fresh installs or dist-upgrade, either netinstall or from ISO, default options for XFCE comes with Polkit complaints the first start (someone put Mate Polkit together with XFCE Polkit in the default install), followed by Untitled Window every boot. I first experienced this during beta, reverted back to the old trusted 5. Tried again yesterday, viola.

What kind of devs release untested OS like that? Seriously, do the devs NOT even try/test them?

It happened to 3 of my computers (2 laptops, 1 desktop), all ran Devuan 5 just fine. This 6 is just ugly, either upgrade or fresh install brings problems.

Appalling, to be honest. Now I will leave Devuan. Poor quality control, not to mention the Firefox system bar having to be there taking spaces and no way to turn if off.

Thanks for the all the good days in the past years. It's time for me to move on.

HardSun · 2025-12-16 06:34:31

lafat wrote:

1) Polkit complaints the first start (someone put Mate Polkit together with XFCE Polkit in the default install)
2) Untitled Window every boot.
3) What kind of devs release untested OS like that? Seriously, do the devs NOT even try/test them?
4) not to mention the Firefox system bar having to be there taking spaces and no way to turn if off.

Instead of patronizing remarks in your OP you could have asked how to resolve these issues the right way and help improve devuan for everybody.

Ron · 2025-12-16 10:25:07

It's funny, Devuan 6 has been out for how long now, weeks? Over a month? And this is the first post I've seen about these issues.

rolfie · 2025-12-16 10:35:22

I am happy with my Devuan 6 Excalibur installations, both with Cinamon as desktop. Yes there are a few nicks and glitches, but nothing I would complain too much about. And what I have seen is inherited from Debian upstream.

Camtaf · 2025-12-16 11:32:59

Nothing wrong with Excaliber, installed to about 5 machines, only issue that I found was that the 'Live' wouldn't install grub to UEFI systems, (worked for MBR), but the 'Desktop' version got them up & running OK.

P.S. I even did an upgrade of one system without much bother, (down to Debian having changed things).

Last edited by Camtaf (2025-12-16 11:34:55)

greenjeans · 2025-12-16 15:53:14

And what I have seen is inherited from Debian upstream.

^^THIS^^. And not just Debian but further upstream too.

I'm pretty blown away at all the work the devs have had to do (and are still doing) to make it work at all. Bless them all for doing it too, with no pay and not a lot of gratitude shown by some.

At some point it's time to stop walking away from things that aren't working so well, and jump into the fray and start helping.

Once more unto the breech dear friends.

semil · 2025-12-16 16:31:44

Devuan suffers from being somewhat insider/secretive. I skim the mailiing lists and forum, usually more frequently between the time of a Debian release and a Devuan release, in order to learn what’s happening. And I saw messages from people asking how things are progressing, whether there was something to test or whatever, and the insiders as usual would respond like “Shush. Wait silently. When it’ll be released, it’ll be released.” Perceiving users as adversaries.

golinux · 2025-12-16 18:07:47

There are no "insiders" but there are "outsiders" who don't bother to walk through the door which is always open. We were pleading on channels for users to test this and that. The lack of response is not the fault of the developers.

viptux · 2025-12-16 18:40:30

Adopted excalibur as my daily driver while it was in testing [aug 2024]
Have never experienced major issues.. some tweaks here/there; no show stoppers.

Since GA, deployed several installations on EFI hardware without issues.
[ netboot.iso - GPT mdraid-1.0 hosted lvm OS volume, containing /boot /home and / ]

Boots successfully from the primary EFI partition.

WIth the base layout for my use case, Excalibur knocks it out of the ballpark!

Last edited by viptux (2025-12-16 18:41:16)

ralph.ronnquist · 2025-12-16 22:12:07

I think we should thank @lafat for offereing tactical level feedback, which is perfectly good to get for a tactical management suborganisation.

Of course such a thing does not exist in the name of Devuan. Instead there are only a number of Devuan fork maintainers who each focus on their packages, a small group of people keeping up the build and repository system and the much larger group of "normal" people that in their minds identify as Devuanites to varying degrees from the perspective of using the Devuan repositories.

All thoughts on coherence and "quality" of desktop environments and "distributions" will fall on those who take an interest in that. It's not something seen as "a Devuan concern".

Rather, Devuan's (qua organisation) strategic objective is merely to counteract the technological lock-in peddled by and with the systemd crowd, by taking positive action that includes both technical work (to bring about and maintain working alternatives) and community oriented activities that largely are aimed at maintaining an active and engaged community.

I'm sure we all also recognise that at a forum like this, anyone at times will capture their thoughts and feelings in words quicly and strongly, and submit without much post-editorial attention to how the words will land in the readership. Evenso, I want to think of every post as intended towards improvement.

greenjeans · Yesterday 00:06:25

My take on it for what it's worth, i'm fond of analogies as like memes they allow us to impart more info with less words.

I spent many years in various types of construction and fabrication, so that's the basis for this analogy.

Devuan is not a homebuilder, Devuan is Home Depot, with tens of thousands of building materials and tools created by a diverse group of folks worldwide, they provide a range of products to cover almost any need, while also trying to filter out the bad products that try to sneak in.

I, as a person creating a distro, am the homebuilder. It is my job to be architect, designer, general contractor, carpenter, plumber, electrician, and to provide a finished ready-to-move-in home.

That's as simple as I can make it, to me Devuan is Home Depot, and quite a nice one at that. Bonus: I don't have to pay for the materials or tools. I go shopping and come home with a trailer-load of cool stuff and am only limited by my own skills and creativity.

Eeqmcsq · Yesterday 05:24:05

Regarding the "Untitled Window" problem, I reported that problem during RC1, hunted through the slim code, compared the Excalibur slim code vs Dadealus slim, and explained the cause. There were some proposed patches, which I code reviewed, tested, and confirmed that the patches worked at fixing this "Untitled Window" problem, as well as other slim problems I found when no monitor is connected.

Excalibur RC1 + Xfce + slim + auto login shows Untitled window

So there was definitely some testing and bug fixing done.

So if you're still seeing this "Untitled Window" problem, the question to ask is the current status of these patches. Have they made it into the slim package yet? If not, what's keeping these patches from being included with slim during an installation? More slim bugs that need to be fixed? I haven't installed Xfce + slim since RC1 because I'm using the MATE desktop + lightdm, so I haven't checked the status of slim since RC1.

blackhole · Yesterday 17:44:37

I have never had much success with SLiM on any OS / Linux distribution. I seem to remember testing it with autologin (I don't use autologin personally but needed it for a project) and getting nowhere fast, so I went with lightdm instead.

Apart from that bug with the "untitled" window, which was thoroughly explored by Eegmcsq in the other thread, and the polkit issue for which you have provided no information at all, I'm not seeing the justification for the criticism and general tone of your OP - or declaring Devuan a "shit show".

The SLiM issue looks like an "upstream" problem, so your complaint is somewhat misdirected. The supposed polkit issue, can't be addressed because you've provided no details. Also no idea what the "firefox system bar" is.

Last edited by blackhole (Yesterday 17:53:15)

hacksenwerk · Yesterday 19:01:59

There are two testing stages for software releases:
1. Before it is released.
2. After it is released.

And now the big suprise: this is the case not just for software, but for everything humans create!

zapper · Today 04:30:33

@golinux you mean its not the fault of devuan developers. Debian ones... Idk.

blackhole · Today 08:13:28

Debian "developers" don't "develop", the software. Debian mainly provide the packaging tools and infrastructure. The package maintainers attempt to fix bugs, but they are usually reliant on patches from upstream.

This is where the OP's argument is most misguided. Debian don't "quality control" every single line of code that makes up a source package, which is in turn packaged and then becomes a Debian release. Due to the nature of the "freeze", Debian releases with numerous bugs and receives ongoing fixes during the lifetime of a release. Sime bugs are never fixed.

Devuan and other derivatives inherit those. Except for maybe Ubuntu, none of the derivatives have the man power to go it alone.

So Debian and by extension Devuan, are not actually responisble for any bugs in the upstream software they may provide. Really this would be better as a detailed bug report to the developers of SLiM.

steve_v · Today 10:08:40

"Quality control" WRT Debian and/or Devuan releases isn't about upstream software having bugs or not... It's whether buggy upstream versions are packaged for stable.
This is why we have the unstable -> testing -> stable workflow - packages that have serious bugs shouldn't be making it through testing... And they sure as hell shouldn't be the first thing a user interacts with in a release livecd or default install.

This particular bug in SLiM was raised in the excalibur RCs, and hasn't been satisfactorily addressed (nor has the one I reported). Those bugs existing is on upstream, but SLiM still being the default greeter despite them is a Devuan decision, and by extension, a Devuan problem.

Upstream bugs are not a distribution issue. Software selection, packaging, and sane defaults are.
If Devuan wants to package a different default desktop setup from Debian, the lack of QC on that setup is not something that can be blamed on Debian.
They use lightdm for their XFCE live image, did anyone think to ask why, or are we all too busy trying to deflect blame for the rushed, poorly tested, perpetually janky live releases?

SLiM is a mess, and has been for years. Stop using it as the default greeter. Problem solved.

Last edited by steve_v (Today 10:17:20)

fsmithred · Today 13:14:48

FYI: The 6.0.0 desktop-live iso does not have the untitled blank window or the polkit warning. If it did, it wouldn't have been 6.0.0.

pcalvert · Today 15:30:14

The night before last I upgraded a Daedalus-based Refracta to Excalibur. I experienced no major problems, but there were some minor ones.

The most noticeable problem was the CPU Graph plugin for Xfce kept crashing and had to be removed. I'm not sure why, and haven't had time to investigate this issue yet.

I may have also found a serious problem in one of Debian's packages -- a security-related program never starts because no configuration file was installed when the package was installed. I will refrain from naming the software until I've investigated further. Perhaps this was just a fluke caused by the system being in a transitional state when I attempted to reinstall the package.

blackhole · Today 16:30:38

"This is why we have the unstable -> testing -> stable workflow"

In Debian yes, not in the derivatives, unless the derivate in question is intentionally and by design, based on the Debian testing and/or unstable branches (e.g. Ubuntu) and has the manpower and financial backing to oversee a project on the scale of Debian. Based on this, it has already gone past that stage of "quality control" and the Devuan maintainers/packagers are only focused on systemd removal, as I understand it?

"stable" in the Debian sense means "unchanging", it doesn't mean bug free. Debian releases, go out with bugs, and receive continual updates until the release is EoL.

It's impossible to QC everything, as it's impossible to QC everything in FreeBSD ports, for example. Many packages lack maintainers, etc...

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#1 2025-12-16 02:46:40

Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#2 2025-12-16 06:34:31

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#3 2025-12-16 10:25:07

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#4 2025-12-16 10:35:22

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#5 2025-12-16 11:32:59

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#6 2025-12-16 15:53:14

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#7 2025-12-16 16:31:44

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#8 2025-12-16 18:07:47

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#9 2025-12-16 18:40:30

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#10 2025-12-16 22:12:07

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#11 Yesterday 00:06:25

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#12 Yesterday 05:24:05

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#13 Yesterday 17:44:37

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#14 Yesterday 19:01:59

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#15 Today 04:30:33

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#16 Today 08:13:28

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#17 Today 10:08:40

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#18 Today 13:14:48

Re: Devuan 6 Extremely Poor Quality Control.

#19 Today 15:30:14

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#20 Today 16:30:38

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