Test ISO: refracta freia xlibre turnstile pipewire

fsmithred · 2026-05-07 20:03:01

In the spirit of "Let's change three or four variables at once and see what happens" this one started out as a Refracta 13 (Excalibur) no-X iso, upgraded to Freia, and then had some lxqt and xfce thrown at it along with getting xorg replaced with xlibre. It also has turnstile installed for user services (see man suss) and pipewire set up as a user service. It also has a few wireless firmware packages installed from the firmware-nonfree repo.

https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 7_1411.iso

There's a short README in the user's home. Read it.

If you need to log in:
Login: user Password: user
Login: root Password: root

The default desktop is lxqt. To get to xfce in the live iso is tricky.
Drop to console, stop lightdm, comment out the autologin lines in lightdm.conf, start lightdm, click on the white dot in the login panel to select the session. Choices are lxqt, xfce or openbox. They all work from here.

If you drop to console, stop lightdm and then run startxfce4, you end up with no inputs. If you use startlxqt or startx /usr/bin/openbox-session in console, you do get inputs. I don't know why it's like that.

fsmithred · 2026-05-11 14:53:20

Easier way to get to xfce. Don't know why I didn't think of this the first time.

At the isolinux boot menu (for legacy boot) press TAB, or at the grub menu (for uefi boot) press e to edit the boot command.

Add either 'noautologin' or 'nox11autologin' to the boot command. For legacy boot, it goes at the end of the command that appears at the bottom of the screen. For uefi boot it goes at the end of the linux line.

You'll boot to a lightdm login screen. Login as user with password user.

Has anyone tried this iso yet? Please see if you can break it. Thanks.

aitor · 2026-06-02 22:30:30

fsmithred wrote:

Easier way to get to xfce. Don't know why I didn't think of this the first time

I managed booting genuen + vdev + seatd + xlibre without any display manager https://www.genuen.org/mirror/excalibur and the result is that coldplug input devices at server start do work (devices present before xlibre starts, or after restarting xlibre with the device already plugged in), but disconnect/reconnect or a newly plugged input/event* node won't respond until xlibre is restarted, unless a workaround is used -for example, adding myself to the input group, which isn't very convincing-; the best workaround I've found is to add startxfce4 to ~/.xinitrc and use exec startx instead. I have:

#!/bin/sh
exec /etc/X11/Xsession startxfce4

Btw, I'm curious to try chimera's turnstile, so I downloaded your iso. Thanks!

fsmithred · 2026-06-07 21:10:40

I'm not seeing that problem in my seatd test iso:
https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 4_1517.iso

I can add a mouse after boot and it works, and I can boot with the mouse plugged in, unplug and replug it and it works again. I'm running the iso from a live-usb for this test.

That one has seatd without elogind or consolekit and without a display manager. (also no turnstile in that one)

ralph.ronnquist · 2026-06-07 22:50:45

@aitor: turnstile is ported to debian, with a "simple user session startup backend". It's in ceres.

re hotplugging: does the device plug-in get logged in X11 log? in syslog? I think X11 needs the libinput module for hotpluggable devices, and that this interacts with udev.

menuhin · 2026-06-20 17:27:39

I have been contemplating if someone has already tried to run Devuan with seatd and turnstiled etc. and xlibre, instead of elogind and Xorg...

fsmithred · 2026-06-20 19:43:09

You can add turnstile to the no-elogind build. I just tried it, and it doesn't pull anything else in.
https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 4_1517.iso

aitor · 2026-06-24 23:12:04

ralph.ronnquist wrote:

does the device plug-in get logged in X11 log? in syslog? I think X11 needs the libinput module for hotpluggable devices, and that this interacts with udev

I've solved the issue: it seems that a prior input-only OS_SUBSYSTEM filter applied to zzz-udev-compat.act in the vdevd.1 profile left DRM without G:seat / E:ID_SEAT entries. Thanks

Last edited by aitor (2026-06-24 23:12:57)

Xaver · Today 15:36:34

Based on 'refracta_13.3_nox_amd64-20260501_1521.iso' I have created a similar system in qemu.
Already two years ago I had build such a system based on antiX-23 (bookworm). It is running stable on my desktop pc as my work horse.

These have been my steps:

(1) install refracta_13.3_nox with runit and seatd

(2) exclude unwanted packages via pins in /etc/apt/preferences.d:
00dbus-bin 00java-common 00libelogind0 00libsystemd0 00mono-runtime-common 00nodejs 00polkitd

(3) add antiX-26 repos to refracta
Give Devuan a higher priority than antiX in /etc/apt/preferences.d
To stay as close as possible to original Devuan I have turned on the antiX repos only when needed.
(i.e.: Arandr from Devuan cannot be installed – the antiX version is fine. Plank needs gconf-gsettings-backend from antiX to function properly.)
Once the base system has been completed, I shall keep the antiX repos turned on for upgrades.

(4) install from antiX-26:
# apt install turnstile runit-service-turnstiled libturnstile0
# apt install runit-service-seatd

(5) install my proven Openbox desktop
This setup should work with all window managers.
Desktops do not work. They all need active dbus daemons, whereas this setup uses libdbus-1-3 only.

(6) Power Management
For power management I use acpid, xset and the script suspend_if_idle (combined with i3lock and kdocker).
[https://gitlab.com/antiX-Linux/antix-go … type=heads]

(7) use lxterminal as pseudo gui
i.e.; obsession is crippled, lxsession needs polkit
As workaround in the openbox menu I use commands like the following:

<execute>lxterminal --geometry=32x4 --title=PowerOff -e bash -c "echo -- ???-PowerOff-??? --; read line; (openbox --exit && sudo poweroff); echo read line"
<execute>lxterminal --geometry=90x32 --title=clamscan_Downloads -e "clamscan -v -r ~/Downloads; echo '<Enter> to Close Terminal'; read line"

So far I have found a solution for all my software needs within this setup.
The system is light, fast and stable and maybe a little more secure than standard.

I had to create one single dummy for pkexec, because gparted as dependency of refractainstaller-gui demands it. Of course pkexec is not really needed. Gparted starts as well with 'lxsu' or 'su-to-root -X -c'.

An extra benefit: The limitations have inspired me to find better alternatives to standard apps.
Example: I use SQLiteStudio instead of the bloated LibreOffice-Base.

Linux-libre works well, but I prefer the Devuan kernel for the option of non-free-firmware.
So far xorg has not caused any problems. Therefore I have not yet tested xlibre. It is in the antiX-26 repo. '#apt install -s xlibre' does not show any problems, but all the xserver-xorg-input-* packages will be removed.

runit-service-manager
screenshot runit-service-manager https://postimg.cc/RqQnGVvg