The officially official Devuan Forum!

KatolaZ

Member

Registered: 2017-03-11

Posts: 79  

Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Dear Init Freedom Lovers,

Once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you!

We are happy to announce that the Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate is now available
thanks to the support, feedback, and collaboration of the Devuan community. Devuan 2.0
ASCII Stable will be following soon.

The Devuan 2.0 ASCII RC installer now offers a wider variety of Desktop Environments
including XFCE, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQT (with others available post-install).  In
addition, there are options for "Console productivity" with hundreds of CLI and TUI utils,
as well as a minimal base system ideal for servers.

When installing from ISO, the expert install option offers a choice of SysVinit and OpenRC.
Official ready-to-use Devuan 2.0 ASCII RC images are available for dozens of ARM boards
and SOCs, including Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, OrangePi, BananaPi, OLinuXino,
Cubieboard, Nokia N900, and several Chromebooks, as well as for Virtualbox/QEMU/Vagrant.

The desktop-live images are recommended for users to explore and easily install Devuan 2.0
ASCII RC and also for the press to review the default Xfce desktop.

The minimal-live image provides a full-featured console-based system with a particular
focus on accessibility.

Devuan developers have already started working on the third Devuan release codenamed
Beowulf (Planet nr. 38086). Preliminary installer images should be ready for testing soon.

## Download

Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate images are available for download at:
    http://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii_rc/ 
and from the ISO mirrors listed at:
    http://devuan.org/get-devuan
The latter URL also includes information about the official Devuan repositories.

## Upgrade

Upgrade paths from Debian Jessie, Devuan Jessie, and Debian Stretch are available.
Please see the instructions at:
https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/
 
The following will be enough to upgrade if you are already using Devuan ASCII Beta:
    apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

## Derivatives

The Devuan project is about providing a reliable universal base for derivatives to
build on its foundation. These recent Devuan derivatives deserve special recognition:

Maemo Leste is a new ASCII-based derivative succesfully ported on a number of mobile
phones like the Nokia N900, N950, Motorola Droid 4, Allwinner tablets and more. 
https://maemo-leste.github.io/

DecodeOS is another ASCII-based derivative targeting micro-service usage on anonymous
network clusters. It includes original software developed to automatically build p2p
networks as Tor hidden service families.  https://decodeos.dyne.org/

heads, the libre privacy distro previously based on ASCII, continues its development and
has already moved forward to Beowulf as its new base. https://heads.dyne.org

More Devuan derivatives can be found at:
https://devuan.org/os/partners/devuan-distros

## Contact

Mailing list: https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/m … stinfo/dng 
IRC: #devuan #devuan-dev (Freenode) 
Forum: http://dev1galaxy.org
Press contact: freedom@devuan.org
Bug tracker: https://bugs.devuan.org
Popularity contest: https://popcon.devuan.org

## Appreciation

We wish to thank all of you for the incredible support given to this development effort,
which continues to make Devuan a useful and reliable base distro as well as a pleasant
and cooperative community.

To support the Devuan project: https://devuan.org/donate

Financial reports for the year 2017 are available for download from the same page.

happy hacking ;^)

MiyoLinux

Member

Registered: 2016-12-05

Posts: 1,323  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Hooray!

---

I have been Devuanated, and my practice in the art of Devuanism shall continue until my Devuanization is complete. Until then, I will strive to continue in my understanding of Devuanchology, Devuanprocity, and Devuanivity.

Veni, vidi, vici vdevuaned. I came, I saw, I Devuaned.

sgage

Member

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 341  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Congrats to all! I have been happily running ASCII for many months now, but I will test the RC installer. It is encouraging to see the Devuan Project progressing so nicely...

AntoFox

Member

Registered: 2016-12-03

Posts: 27  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Good work guys!!

rivenathos

Member

Registered: 2016-12-10

Posts: 7  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Excellent news! I look forward to test-driving ASAP.

---

Currently running hardware includes a Dell OptiPlex 3010 desktop, a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop, and a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop.

elc79

Member

Registered: 2018-05-10

Posts: 2  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Good! Are you going to provide a recent version of OpenRC? It could be a great thing if you are the first Debian based distro with full integration of OpenRC, i mean as full replacement of SysVinit and giving the Gentoo scripts (v0.34 Debian Buster package doesn't have it) to get OpenRC working with the graphical system (shutdown,reboot,etc.). Waiting for the stable release of this magnificient distro.

catprints

Member

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 145  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Great work and many heartfelt thanks!

---

"The obstacle is the path."

Panopticon

Member

Registered: 2018-01-27

Posts: 306  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Have been using Ascii on an old media box since it arrived as beta, have had no issues thus far using a full xfce4 install. Thanks and congrats on the milestone.

Last edited by Panopticon (2018-05-10 12:30:14)

ncbeachbum

Member

Registered: 2018-05-10

Posts: 5  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Excellent work Devuan devs! Has been running smooth since beta along with latest stable build of Trinity desktop!

Nili

Member

From: $HOME/♫♪

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 230  

Website

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Congratulation! Thank you for all the dedicated time and efforts!

---

Tumbleweed - KDE Plasma (Wayland) - Breeze (LeafDark) [Qt]
♪Mahara★Japaaan!

Kiergan

Member

Registered: 2017-05-31

Posts: 15  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

13K views in 2 days
It shows that even though there are not many replies, many are following the progress.
The release will be 'When ready", I assume?
I am preparing a new install (CLI-only) and would like to start with ASCII if possible.

Panopticon

Member

Registered: 2018-01-27

Posts: 306  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Just did a bare bones install of this RC ,basic openbox, a workable build environment. Running palemoon,pcmanfm,terminator i was using 284 mb on the amd64 netinstall iso. Basic usage like that is what makes me really enjoy Devuan.

sgage

Member

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 341  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I just did a fresh installation from the installer DVD (not the live CD or minimal), using MATE as my DE. The installation itself was very smooth and fast - no problems that I could see.

The installation itself is fine. The only glitch I have encountered in my exhaustive testing (10 minutes of usage ;-) is that in sources.lst, while the deb line for the cdrom is commented out, another has been added, so that the cdrom is asked for during apt operations - might be confusing to people less familiar with how these things work. Also, there is no entry for ascii-updates.

Other than that, Plank has a small glitch in that the tool-tips that fly up when you mouse over an item on the dock are solid black. I wish I could just turn them off altogether.

That's about it for now. I think ASCII is really close to being ready to go...

Andre4freedom

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 174  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I use ASCII RC on productive systems now. The Cinnamon-OpenRC install is just perfectly stable and flawless.
When I use XFCE4 and OpenRC I get a few bumps, but they are easy to overcome.
One note: on the XFCE4 desktop the administrative tools cannot be launched using the XFCE4-menu. You have to do a "gksu synaptic" in a terminal - that works well.
Even ICA-Client (Citrix Desktop), skype and the latest LibreOffice 6.0.4 work perfectly well.
So to say: if it's for me - this version is ready for stable. Congratulations. And a BIG THANK YOU!
André

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,316  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

One note: on the XFCE4 desktop the administrative tools cannot be launched using the XFCE4-menu. You have to do a "gksu synaptic" in a terminal - that works well.

Ah, another happy Devuan user.    Thanks for the report.

Yeah . . .   non-functional pkexe from the menu is a known DEBIAN issue that Devuan keeps getting docked for.  And the solution is as you described.  Now that gksu has been dropped we will have another pkg to maintain . . .

---

Get answers - Help Devuan - Report a bug - Search packages

Geoff 42

Member

Registered: 2016-12-15

Posts: 462  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I am using the wrapper program which Didier Kryn posted on DNG. It looks like pkexec, but uses sudo or udevil to do the work.
For more details see :-

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=7703#p7703

Geoff

mlsmith

Member

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 60  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I'm using the RC on a VPS and desktop right now and it's working wonderfully. Many thanks to everyone who works on this project!

alexkemp

Member

Registered: 2018-05-14

Posts: 357  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I registered explicitly to state how happy I am with Ascii:– naturally it took ages to update, but my system is now much more sprightly in both startup & operation and a number of outstanding irritations have been fixed with the upgrades. Most excellent.

alexk@ng3:~$ neofetch
   ..,,;;;::;,..                   alexk@ng3 
           `':ddd;:,.              --------- 
                 `'dPPd:,.         OS: Devuan GNU/Linux testing/unstable x86_64 
                     `:b$$b`.      Model: 90BJ008CUK Lenovo H30-05 
                        'P$$$d`    Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64 
                         .$$$$$`   Uptime: 4 days, 18 hours, 38 minutes 
                         ;$$$$$P   Packages: 1999 
                      .:P$$$$$$`   Shell: bash 4.4.12 
                  .,:b$$$$$$$;'    Resolution: 1366x768 
             .,:dP$$$$$$$$b:'      DE: XFCE 
      .,:;db$$$$$$$$$$Pd'`         WM: Xfwm4 
 ,db$$$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`             WM Theme: Default 
:$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`                  Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-DarkPurpy [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3] 
 `$$$$$bd:''`                      Icons: Oxygen [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3] 
   `'''`                           Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
                                   CPU: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics (4) @ 2.2GHz 
                                   GPU: AMD Radeon R4/R5 Graphics 
                                   Memory: 4078MB / 7403MB 
                                    
                                   ████████████████████████ 

Some small changes from the upgrade advice given on https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev … e-to-ascii (mine was a fully-updated Devuan Jessie on a 2-years-old EFI AMD64 Lenovo H30-05 A8 desktop):–

• Ascii is one of the distributions within https://auto.mirror.devuan.org, so use that within sources.list
  The advice from golinux (the Administrator here) is to use deb.devuan.org as per the advice within https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list. There is no need to log into your bank when updating, so I guess that a secure connection via HTTPS is a little over the top.

• Use “main contrib non-free” rather than just “main”, else your wifi (etc.) may not work after

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
## package repositories
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-security main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii-backports main contrib non-free
# apt-get upgrade devuan-keyring
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# apt autoremove
# apt-get clean

PS
‘apt-transport-https’ needs to be installed in order to join the rest of the human race within the 21st Century if using HTTPS rather than HTTP, but golinux has stated that HTTPS support will eventually be removed from sources.list. I originally updated using HTTPS, but after changing sources.list to the above & updating again I discovered a missing deb, so NOT using HTTPS is good advice.

Glitches
There has been enough time to catch only one so far, and it is a universal rather than a Devuan-specific issue:–

Conky
${pre_exec} has been removed in v1.10.6 conky (a dumb decision, imo).

Either pin the version from Jessie, or use (eg) ${execi 65000 lsb_release -ds}.

Whilst on the subject, the Conky man page still advises using http:// weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/ (withdrawn 2016-08-03 and gives a 404). http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observat … /stations/ is a drop-in replacement, providing the identical METARs.

Many thanks to all that have worked on getting Ascii fit for release.

2018-05-17 Edit: Added neofetch output obtained after upgrade to ascii.
2018-05-15 Edit: Modifed sources.list advice following input from golinux.

Last edited by alexkemp (2018-05-17 11:19:34)

Essikario

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 3  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.
If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:
Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)
Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

My main reason for switching to Devuan is security... I was seriously shocked to see this mistake, I really had idea what Devuan was careful with security!
I guess there is so much work that you can't check every detail, so most important:
Thank you for the big work, you makes us free again !

KatolaZ

Member

Registered: 2017-03-11

Posts: 79  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.
If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:
Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)
Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

Where is Devuan installing contrib and/or non-free software without your explicit consent? Which install medium have you used? With which options? As we have repeatedly said, Devuan does not install any non-free software at all. It asks if you want to use contrib and/or non-free but this is the same as in Debian. The only non-free software available in the install media is non-free wifi firmware. And you are asked if you want to use it or not. If you discovered an unexpected behaviour in this respect, please file a bug report, providing detailed information about the install image you used, the options you selected at install time, and the specific non-free software you found installed in your Devuan system.

Please clarify your statement, and, please, just avoid to spread more FUD :-(

Regards

KatolaZ

Essikario

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 3  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.
If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:
Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)
Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

Where is Devuan installing contrib and/or non-free software without your explicit consent? Which install medium have you used? With which options? As we have repeatedly said, Devuan does not install any non-free software at all. It asks if you want to use contrib and/or non-free but this is the same as in Debian. The only non-free software available in the install media is non-free wifi firmware. And you are asked if you want to use it or not. If you discovered an unexpected behaviour in this respect, please file a bug report, providing detailed information about the install image you used, the options you selected at install time, and the specific non-free software you found installed in your Devuan system.

Please clarify your statement, and, please, just avoid to spread more FUD :-(

Regards

KatolaZ

Thank you for your answer, I'm sorry that I was not precise enough.

The shortest answer:  I'm using Devuan exactly like I was using Debian.
But the result regarding sources.list is different, as the non-free and contrib keywords has been added.

A bit more in the details:
I put one iso (Ascii RC, amd64 cd1) to a thumb drive, run the installer (non graphical), and I was never asked about free or non free things.
Still my sources.list has non-free and contrib added.

For me removing systemd is one awesome step forward, but if I have a chance to unwillingly install one non-free software, this is ten steps backwards...
For this reason changing the default Debian behavior comes with great risks.

Having non-free wifi firmware in the installer sounds fair if the user is asked about.

Regards

KatolaZ

Member

Registered: 2017-03-11

Posts: 79  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Thank you for your answer, I'm sorry that I was not precise enough.

The shortest answer:  I'm using Devuan exactly like I was using Debian.
But the result regarding sources.list is different, as the non-free and contrib keywords has been added.

A bit more in the details:
I put one iso (Ascii RC, amd64 cd1) to a thumb drive, run the installer (non graphical), and I was never asked about free or non free things.
Still my sources.list has non-free and contrib added.

Can you please post the sources.list file that you found in your system at the end of the installation? That would be helpful.

Regards

KatolaZ

Panopticon

Member

Registered: 2018-01-27

Posts: 306  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I had no issues with the installer, i did use graphical install and it asked if i wanted to install non free software. Maybe try the installer again Essikario, you may have missed a step?

Essikario

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 3  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I have very bad news... Devuan did install non free software on my computer without asking .

aptitude search ~i~s"non-free~|contrib"
i   firmware-realtek                - Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT 

I'm using very precise hardware that I know can run well without closed source firmware, more precisely the Ethernet adapter. (I used Debian for ages for this reason, being fairly confident to have no closed source things installed). I don't know if this is because of the wifi or the other Ethernet adapter (that I can't physically remove.... maybe I should DIY a bit...), but the installed did that without my consent.

I'm reading a bit more about the issue now. It sounds like you have to use either the expert install, or the graphical install..., or that's a bug.
More here:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1984
Ha ha ha, the ID of the topic is...................1984 !!!

About my sources.list, I removed the contrib and non-free words as soon as I could (and the cdrom line), so the spacing may have changed, but it did look like this:

# 
# deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1]/ ascii main non-free
deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1]/ ascii main non-free

deb http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free

deb http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free

The very iso: devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1.iso

I hope it helps!

KatolaZ

Member

Registered: 2017-03-11

Posts: 79  

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I have very bad news... Devuan did install non free software on my computer without asking .

aptitude search ~i~s"non-free~|contrib"
i   firmware-realtek                - Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT 

I'm using very precise hardware that I know can run well without closed source firmware, more precisely the Ethernet adapter. (I used Debian for ages for this reason, being fairly confident to have no closed source things installed). I don't know if this is because of the wifi or the other Ethernet adapter (that I can't physically remove.... maybe I should DIY a bit...), but the installed did that without my consent.

I'm reading a bit more about the issue now. It sounds like you have to use either the expert install, or the graphical install..., or that's a bug.
More here:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1984
Ha ha ha, the ID of the topic is...................1984 !!!

About my sources.list, I removed the contrib and non-free words as soon as I could (and the cdrom line), so the spacing may have changed, but it did look like this:

# 
# deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1]/ ascii main non-free
deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1]/ ascii main non-free

deb http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free

deb http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ch.deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free

The very iso: devuan_ascii_2.0.0-rc_amd64_cd-1.iso

I hope it helps!

Not much, unfortunately. Could you please send (via email) the installation log? It's under /var/log/installer/syslog.

Regards

KatolaZ