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MoonDog

Member

Registered: 2020-06-08

Posts: 10  

Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

So I am at the point where I need to either upgrade or find something else.  But I have tried the current two releases and had no end of problems with them, from the mouse and keyboard not working, to lots of libseat problems (why do i even need this library?).  What i want is a distro that doesn't change what works.  Doesn't try to reinvent the wheel over and over.  If it works today, why try and intentionally break it for tomorrow?

So i run Fluxbox, which i start from startx.  I use the proprietary Nvidia driver.  I use XFE for my file manager.  I compile quite a few things from source and maintain them myself (and am quiet proficient in building things from source).  It works and I've been doing it this way for maybe the last 15 years (I used Gnome for the 10 years before that).  I just want something that will still allow me to do it this way in 20 years time.  I have no use for new fangled things that fix problems that don't exist like this Wayland system.  X has been working fine for the last 25 years that i've been using it.

Sorry, needed to moan as I realised today Chimaera no longer gets updates, which means I have to complicate my life with upgrades.

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 333  

Re: Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

Building from source on a package-based distro (like Devuan) that extensively is asking for trouble. You may want to switch to Gentoo (or Funtoo if that's up & running again) or even Linux from Scratch, Arch or Slackware.

Source-based distro's, so you get to determine what packages to build. That said, prior to switching to Devuan I ran Funtoo for a while and found emerge powerful but basically useless for conflict-solving. Apt is so much better fixing dependency hell.

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,753  

Re: Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

One significant change in Xorg was that input devices are "mediated" rather than accessed directly. This may be a non-issue if you run it by using startx and also retain permissions for /dev/input etc for the running user.

Other than that, you'll probably run into the same pleasure as everyone else that the notion of "backward compatibility" has dissolved and been replaced with "upgrade everything now, and then again next week".

MoonDog

Member

Registered: 2020-06-08

Posts: 10  

Re: Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

Building from source on a package-based distro (like Devuan) that extensively is asking for trouble. You may want to switch to Gentoo (or Funtoo if that's up & running again) or even Linux from Scratch, Arch or Slackware.

Thing is, what can i do.  Stuff like OpenVPN is always out of date on Devuan.  Like the current version is 2.7.7 and the latest version available on Chimaera was substantially less than that (maybe in the 2.4 versions), plus there have been some serious security holes patched in some of those releases.  Luanti was another one I had to build myself because the Debian version was very out of date (couldn't get mineclonia to run).  Other times you go to install something and it needs some specific program or library which isn't available on Devuan/Debian/Ubuntu, so you have to build it yourself to get everything to work.  Had that when trying to install a network driver for an obsucure wifi adapter and it wanted a certain library that did not exist on debian, which i had to build myself.

Years back I opened a thread about this when using Debian and the response was essentially tough sht.  We can't help you.  So I learnt to help myself.  Linux is the quintessential hackers operating system after all and it is geared for dealing with exactly this problem.

It's actually not that hard to do with Devuan.  I mark any package I intend to build myself, that has an available package with hold, in apt.  Then build the package and install to /usr/local like i've always done.

Other than that, you'll probably run into the same pleasure as everyone else that the notion of "backward compatibility" has dissolved and been replaced with "upgrade everything now, and then again next week".

This one thing irks me the most.  I don't mind updating stuff to fix security issues, but beyond that, I don't want new functionality. I just want it to work today, like it did yesterday and ten years ago.  If it does that i will be forever happy.  I think the nearest distro to that is probably LFS.  I always found Gentoo to be a bit too clunky.  Arch was nice, but too much systemd nowadays.  Slackware was very good, but you can bollocks up the system rather easily with updates and a lot of the time never be able to get it back to a working order.

One moan I have about Xorg is I have had messages in the logs about how my mouse and keyboard are slow (Logitech K120 wired keyboard and Razer Deathadder).  Now these never used to happen before.  Also it tells me my computer is too slow. It's a Ryzen 7 3800x with 64GB Ram and an RTX 2080 Ti.  It is about as far from being slow as it can possibly be.  I read a year back it's an issue in DirectInput, but I haven't worked out how to fix it so far.  When i tried Daedalus the same errors presented, so not fixed yet.

As to the keyboard and mouse not working, the fix is to add your user to the Plugdev group.  Then they work.  I learnt that one while trying to make Daedalus work in a Qemu VM.

blackhole

Member

Registered: 2020-03-16

Posts: 251  

Re: Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

I don't see any real issues in building from source and installing under /usr/local

However, I don't believe that's your real problem here. Funny you mentioned Slackware, as that seems to be what you want. I never had any issues with it, but it's horses for courses.

It seems that you want something that always stays much the same  - but switching to that is going to be a bigger learning curve compared to dealing with the new changes / annoyances that will inevitably appear in most Linux distributions over time. With Debian / Devuan, you're only dealing with that roughly every two years. Slackware will give you even more respite, as the last release was about 4 years ago.

This reluctance to change and learn new things is really why Devuan csme about - there were those who disliked and distrusted systemd intensely, but did not want to have to learn to use different package management tools and configuration, so a derivative with systemd removed seemed the best option. I can understand that. Once you're proficient wirh one system, starting from the ground up and relearning everything to do the same things in a different way just seems a waste of time. This is why I have never been a real fan of complex package management syatems - you might become a $LINUX_DISTRO package management expert, but you're working with a layer of abstraction, not the software / OS itself.  Especially with distributions such as Debian where much if it is "automagic", with daemons configured to start and started automatically on installation. If for some reason it breaks, the usual approach is to purge and reinstall, without really understanding what went wrong.

Last edited by blackhole (Today 07:17:42)

MoonDog

Member

Registered: 2020-06-08

Posts: 10  

Re: Alternatives to Devuan or ways to make new releases like old releases

Yes, I'm not totally against change, but I like an easy life where things don't if I can.  I'd like to stick with Devuan ideally, but i'm not against going back to Slackware.  My ideal would be Slackware with a decent package manager that handled the updates.  But no one ever managed that although some tried.  I've probably used all the major distros in my time doing this and originally it boiled down to three.  CentOS, Debian and Slackware.  CentOS is no longer anything like it was before systemd and the slow march into realms away from Unix fundamentals, Debian I left to come here and Slackware is still old and faithful, mainly due to Patrick's, Linus-esque method of handling the distro and resistance to add new things (although a decent package manager would be a boon).  The apt ability to update and upgrade a system, is one of the main reasons I love Devuan, it removes so much hassle.  Doing the same on Slackware was a major pain.  CentOS also has a decent package manager in yum, but it's need for systemd makes it unsuitable to me (also there was some controversy last year about upstream RHEL, not that I totally read about it).

What will I do.  Probably suck it up and dist-upgrade to Daedalus.  If it all falls apart, back to Slackware.  Looking at it in the last few days, it seems more package managers have appeared and maybe something now exists that can do things more in an apt type of style. 

Going back to Slackware would be full circle for me.  I started my Linux journey on Zipslack and Bigslack a few months after they were released (and yes I still vaguely remember how long it took to download them on a 28.8k modem, but downloading a full set of Slackware was a week long endeavour).  Back when you could still run Linux on top of DOS.  The alien-ness of being presented with a terminal and nothing else.  I showed it to a friend and he asked me what the point was and I replied "freedom".  Zipslack wasn't very functional, but brilliant for repairing a main install that you broke while learning.  Bigslack for the uninitiated was Zipslack with Gnome.  More functionality and the abilities of a GUI.

Anyway this level of nostalgia means I need to grab an SSD out of the spares box and throw the latest Slackware on it and see what is looks like.  Maybe that is the true path.  But a lot depends on the status of the current package managers of which there seems to be a few nowadays.