LinuxQuestions.org - Is DEVUAN better than DEBIAN?

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Is DEVUAN better than DEBIAN?

Hello,

I am using DEBIAN and DEVUAN since some time, mostly as testing and for comparison interest.
http://devuan.org/
http://debian.org/

There are clearly some differences in terms of performances, services and use. Both distro can be compared.

Hence, is DEVUAN better than DEBIAN? Which one is your favorite? Which one is more reliable?

Pros and Cons.

Looking forward to hearing you.

+1 for DEVUAN!

Devuan was created by people who loathe systemd, so I expect those who use it are driven more by principle than by a search for efficiency. It's similar to people using Trisquel or GnuSense. No one chooses those because they are more efficient or better performing. They choose them because they want 100% free software. One of the things I particularly like about Linux is that it caters to many different kinds of users with differing priorities.

Two points to consider about any distro are the number of developers and the number of users. Debian has over a thousand developers and heaven knows how many users (it runs half the internet, for a start). Devuan is an adaptation of Debian made and used by a small community. If anything goes wrong it's more likely to happen and less likely to be spotted quickly in Devuan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann (Post 5675879)

Here a beautiful story:
https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/

...However, for the most part, the core of the vision remains the same: a minimal, stable system which honors Debian history and embraces innovation while maintaining backwards compatibility and interoperability.

Quote:

## [Dng] [debianfork] Don't panic and keep forking Debian™!

Dear Init-Freedom lovers,

The Veteran Unix Admin collective salutes you.

As many of you might know already, the Init GR Debian vote promoted by Ian
Jackson wasn't useful to protect Debian's legacy and its users from the
systemd avalanche.

This situation prospects a lock in systemd dependencies which is de-facto
threatening freedom of development and has serious consequences for Debian,
its upstream and its downstream.

The CTTE managed to swap a dependency and gain us time over a subtle install
of systemd over sysvinit, but even this process was exhausting and full of
drama. Ultimately, a week ago, [Ian Jackson resigned][0].

[0]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte.../msg00091.html

The problem is obviously not just technical: the VUAs idea of calling for a
"fork" mostly refers to the lack of common ground between diverging
perceptions of the Debian project, its governance and its mission. Diverse
mediation attempts have failed. Today we can all peacefully agree on one
thing: further negotiations related to systemd are costing way too much
energy for anyone concerned about the cause of Init Freedom.

We believe this situation is also the result of a longer process leading to
the take-over of Debian by the GNOME project agenda. Considering how far
this has propagated today and the importance of Debian as a universal OS and
base system in the distribution panorama, what is at stake is the future of
GNU/Linux in a scenario of complete homogeneization and lock-in of all base
distributions.

Therefore, looking at how the situation stands today: we need to fork.

In appendix to this mail is the message of Roger Leigh, a Debian Developer
and maintainer of many important parts in Debian. We have his endorsement
and that of other 2 anonymous DDs, plus many letters from concerned
professionals upstream and downstream of Debian.

We welcome all Debian Developers intrigued by our plans. The Dyne.org
non-profit foundation has accepted to provide us support and the
administrative framework we need to get up to speed. If we all struggle for
elegance it will be a light and lean effort, think of channeling the bad
energies into creating something new and beautiful in its simplicity...

### So we will fork!

First of all, our project is called "Devuan". Our home is on
https://devuan.org. Please spread the word. We need volunteers. The
Debianfork website and IRC channel stay as the first campfire for this
adventure, but we will be operating under the name "Devuan" from now on and
we invite everyone to use this name when referring to our project.

Now we need all your support and attention in order to shape this as a
collective and welcoming process for all the people inside and outside
Debian that are willing to contribute to it.

Our fork will grow gradually and step by step, tracing a path that is
different from the one that systemd and the GNOME projects are trying to
impose on everyone. There is space for everyone who wants to participate, a
good channel to start from is #devuan on freenode, the GitHub issues are the
TODO and main topic for that channel, while the well participated
#debianfork stays open for the more general discussion.

### So what's the plan?

First mid-term goal is to produce a reliable and minimalist base
distribution that stays away from the homogenization and lock-in promoted by
systemd. This distribution should be ready about the time Debian Jessie is
ready and will constitute a seamless alternative to its dist-upgrade. As of
today, the only ones resisting are the Slackware and Gentoo distributions,
but we need to provide a solid ground also for apt-get based distributions.
All project on the downstream side of Debian that are concerned by the
systemd avalanche are welcome to keep an eye on our initiative and evaluate
it as an alternative base. We will work carefully to make it a viable
possibility and our primary goal here will be a clean removal of systemd and
its dependencies, rebuilding and patching packages when necessary.

There is already an interesting proof of concept for this plan: the website
http://without-systemd.org/debian-jessie/ (by Obri) explains the pinning
method and provides a 64bit installer of Debian testing free from systemd.
We are running a systemd-free pin on our new Devuan infrastructure already,
well ready to eat our own dogfood of course. If you have greneric
experiments to contribute, experiences or ideas and documention on this and
other approaches, feel free to use the wiki on
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

We started setting up the first bits of a core infrastructure to host a
website, mailinglists and a dak based package repository (to be mirrored,
soon details!).

We are also uploading materials on the https://github.com/devuan group which
we plan to use as a development platform, at least in this initial phase.

For those willing to help immediately, we still need to setup a BTS
(https://www.debian.org/Bugs/) which will allow us to inherit a lot of the
useful tools Debian has developed.

At last we plan to have continuous integration of packages from GitHub to a
Jenkins builder (http://jenkins-debian-glue.org/) and then to our package
repositories. Feel free to experiment and let us know

Continuous Integration Pipeline:

Github --> Jenkins --> packages.devuan.org .oO mirrors

Once this is all set, we will be ready to welcome package maintainers.

Besides the BTS we will use GitHub issues on
https://github.com/devuan/devuan-baseconf/issues for task coordination.

The first package of Devuan is indeed `devuan-baseconf` which basically
consists of a Debian installer with preseed of sysvinit-core and a couple of
devuan packages containing devuan keyring, devuan repository list files and
pinning out of systemd-sysv. Once installed and updated this package will
avoid the requirement of systemd as PID 1 in any case and will prefer use of
systemd-shim when strictly needed.

### More about the vision

This is just a start, as bold as it sounds to call it fork, at a process
that will unfold in time and involve more people, first to import and change
Debian packages and later on to maintain them under a separate course. To
help with this adventure and its growth, we ask you all to get involved, but
also to donate money so that we can cover the costs of setting the new
infrastructure in place.

Devuan aims to be a base distribution whose mission is to put the freedom of
users: to be intended as developers, sysadmins and in general tech-savvy
people, as the majority of Debian users are. Among the priorities are:
enable diversity, interoperability and backward compatibility for the
existing Debian downstream willing to preserve Init Freedom and avoid the
opaque and homogenizing systemd avalanche.

Devuan will derive its own installer and package repositories from Debian,
modifying them where necessary, with the first goal of removing systemd,
still inheriting the Debian development workflow and continuing it on a
different path: free from bloat as a minimalist base distro should be. Users
will be able to switch from Debian 7 to Devuan smoothly, as if they would
dist-upgrade to Jessie.

Devuan will make an effort to rebuild an infrastructure similar to Debian,
but will also take the opportunity to innovate some of its practices. Devuan
developers look at this project as a fresh new start for a community of
interested people and do not intend to enforce the vexation of hierarchy and
bureaucracy that is often opposing innovation in Debian. We are well
conscious this is possible mostly because of starting small again and we
will do our best to not repeat the same mistakes.

The Devuan distribution will make an effort to improve its relationship with
both upstream and downstream and, particularly in its gestational phase,
will do its best to accomodate needs of those downstream distributions
willing to adopt it as base. We look forward to statements of interest from
such distributions, as well as involvement in this planning phase.

Devuan will do its best to stay minimal and abide to the UNIX philosophy of
"doing one thing and doing it well". It will foster diversity and freedom of
choice among all its components and will perceive itself not as an end
product, but as a a process, a starting point for developers, a viable base
for sysadmins and a stable tool for people who have enough experience with
computers. Devuan will never compromise for more efficiency at the cost of
the freedom of its users, rather than leave that and the responsibility for
a secure setup to downstream developers.

### If you need Devuan, then join us and support us now!

Donations: https://devuan.org/donate.html

Designers and creatives: please contribute logos! we don't have one yet.

Wiki: http://without-systemd.org/wiki

GitHub: https://github.com/Devuan

Press and contacts: vua@debianfork.org

General discussion (1st mailinglist):
https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bi...n/listinfo/dng

IRC chat channels on freenode:
\#debianfork (generic discussion)
\#devuan (focus on development)

- -- We conclude quoting a letter by Roger Leigh

Hi,

I'm a Debian developer, currently quite disillusioned with what's been
going on with Debian over the last two years. I'd certainly be
interested in getting involved with a fork.

If systemd had just been an interchangeable init system it wouldn't be
so problematic. It's the scope creep and mess of poorly-defined
interdependencies that are truly shocking. Take logind, for
example. When looking at how to implement XDG_RUNTIME_DIR for
non-systemd inits, I couldn't find any actual specification for how to
do this. That's because there isn't one, just some loosely-worded
descriptions; it only exists in the systemd implementation. And the
semantics of it are very poor indeed; it hasn't been developed with
safety, security or flexibility in mind. We'll come to regret adopting
this since the poor design decisions are likely to become entrenched.

And more recently, there have been several reports of unbootable
systems. That's unconscionable, and a serious break with Debian's
traditionally solid support for backward compatibility. Here, existing
supported systems have had that support dropped on the floor. With
sysvinit great effort was taken never to break existing configurations,
and that appears to have been lost. Introducing dependency-based boot
took over two stable cycles; optional in one, default in the next,
mandatory after that. That could have been reduced certainly, but the
point is that time was taken to ensure its correctness and robustness
(and in the beginning, it did need work, so the wait was worthwhile).
This has not occurred with systemd, which has been made the default yet
is still not ready for production use.

Debian is developed by hundreds of active developers and used by many
times more people. People rely on Debian for their jobs and businesses,
their research and their hobbies. It's not a playground for such
radical experimentation. systemd support was forced in rapidly and
didn't just cause breakage, it caused breakage with our own past,
breaking the reliable upgrades which Debian has been renowned for.
Personally, I'd like to see a much higher regard for stability and
backward compatibility, rather than just ripping out the old in place of
the new without any regard for its true value. It might not be bleeding
edge, but we already have Fedora for people who value this over a solid
and dependable system. It's possible to be up-to-date without being a
Fedora; Debian unstable historically made a good job of this.

Kind regards,
Roger

--
.''`. Roger Leigh
: :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
`. `' schroot and sbuild http://alioth.debian.org/projects/buildd-tools
`- GPG Public Key F33D 281D 470A B443 6756 147C 07B3 C8BC 4083 E800

SystemV is AWESOME !!!

devuan was announced? two years ago? or even longer?
Does that answer your question how reliable it is?

I for one can't see a difference in performance.

If i would want to use a distro based on debian, with debian-package-management, etc, but also would want to avoid systemd, i would prefer antiX.
But to me it seems to make more sense to use a GNU/Linux distro not based on debian to avoid systemd. Or even one of the BSD operating systems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nodir (Post 5675939)

Devuan is pretty stable, it beats Debian for sure.

AntiX really. Wouldn't you use Devuan instead? Which advantages have you found in favor of Antix?

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrick295767 (Post 5675948)

Devuan is pretty stable, it beats Debian for sure.

that's a strong claim.
can you back it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho (Post 5675965)

that's a strong claim.
can you back it?

Debian is of course stable, but SystemD is not for me at all.

been using devuan for something like aproaching 2 years.

i needed to focus on my health and calm down my intensive distro geeking, with elaborate multiboot explorations of gentoo, exherbo, guixsd, bedrock, void, parabola, dragora, slackware, and many more. so i chose to keep things simple with devuan.

afaicr, it has been flawless, effortless, smooth, enjoyable, throughout.

very happy.

devuan may have the different name, but they're the real debian in my mind. debian are the splitters.

years of debian use under my belt prior, both debian itself, and also many respins. i dont recall ever using systemd infested debiand. got enough experience n awareness to know to avoid systemd like the plague.

devuan +1

edit: PS: this may be of vital interest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo "Devuan GNU+Linux presented at FSCONS 2016", providing some background.

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrick295767 (Post 5675948)

Devuan is pretty stable, it beats Debian for sure.

i read this statement as "devuan is more stable than debian".
i see now that this can also be read as 2 separate statements, which probably is what op meant.

don't get me wrong, i'm not dissing devuan in any way.
it's just really a very young project (although it does build on decades of experience), and a statement like "devuan is more stable than debian (stable)" isn't something you can just throw out there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrick295767 (Post 5675948)

AntiX really. Wouldn't you use Devuan instead? Which advantages have you found in favor of Antix?

antiX is there for quite a while now and well known. They do have releases, not some alpha or beta or whatever. They have a working community for support. As far i see they have (for long) found a way to avoid systemd and libsystemd-0, and mainly when using testing or sid.
The lack of noise and announcements about this and that, all in the future, is a style i sure prefer.

btw: I didn't say anything like "i would never ever use devuan". I said: "*if i would want to use a distro based on debian, then i would prefer antiX over devuan, but in general i don't think it makes much sense to stick to debian based distros, if one wants to avoid systemd in the long run".
And if you see that devuan wasn't able to offer a release after more than 2 years, then it seems clear why i think so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho (Post 5676002)

devuan is more stable than debian (stable)" isn't something you can just throw out there.

It is amazing the work of Antix. It is a great distro. It boots and works well on old machines.

SystemV is really awesome. A good to have. SystemV deserves respect. It has something to do with KISS-concept, which is reliable. I still have 2 machines with SystemD, when something goes wrong, it is more difficult to fix with SystemD.

Furthermore, considering bugs, well, the fork has some advantage and drawbacks. The Jessie Devuan has some little bugs, which are similar to the ones of Debian. Both are still unfixed, but it is likely that the Debian community will fix them faster than the Devuan community.

It would interest me to know how big is the Devuan versus Debian community...

Gentoo and Arch are also SystemD menaced. I think that CRUX has a good stategy in overall, looking a bit from outside what's going on today within Linux community.

The Split of Debian never happen, which is meaningful, as follows:
There is something going on since 2 years (see above communication/letter from users).

People want to follow the modernism, which could sometimes not follow GNU, and some others want stability and original solid concept (KISS, GNU,..).

Maybe there should be GNU LINUX/UNIX (Openbsd,Crux,...) and non-GNU-Linux/*NIX (maybe Ubuntu,...)?
Since Linux community gets larger and larger, there should be some more categories. That's completely normal evolution.

When using gentoo you can use systemd, but you can also use openrc, i would even assume that is rather what gentoo users do, from what i read.
It is even more easy to keep it out, compared to a binary distribution.
funtoo even offered gnome without the need for systemd.

+ billion

Quote:

Devuan is pretty stable, it beats Debian for sure

:hattip:

i now use Devuan, but its not so as showed, there's important differences: http://qgqlochekone.blogspot.com/201...-guide-to.html

Debian its the mother of most famous distros, including Devuan! We must have in mind that Devuan goes to minimal things.. that can make unhappy for those that expect a more complete env.. due here we must build by own.. like some time ago... in olders Debian.

Devuan project said its a separate distro, but still make proxy of the mayority Debian packages, 98% in fact (hey its not like Ubntu, that makes many ajust packages with extra features, here there no are new extra fearures packages). Devuan only refactor those that are systemd related.. Devuan except for systemd related, its just a Debian system without systemd.

Devuan have a huge fault in documentation, Debian User documentation, almost mayor distros are based on.. any questions? but for Devun, are very fractured and inconsistent but with, All Debian non-systemd documentation are valid for Devuan due Devuan are a 90% track of Debian packages and system..

The Devuan Overall support are so focused on assume that users are experts, Debian ARE huge organized and working, but Devuan support are very weak and have lack of manpowers..

Devuan Jessie tracks Debian Jessie, ascii is tracking stretch, and ceres will always track sid. While stretch has reached stable, ascii still requires some work. Right now, debian buster is in testing and devuan beowulf, which will track buster, does not yet exist.

* Main desktop : Gnome vs XFce The choice of Devuan was a perfect! due the Debian gnome are very limited in CD/Live

* Init system : systemd(Debian) vs sys-v-init(Devuan) : here, you know what systemd are! a sh*t!

* Support period : 5 years for both, but waith: Devuan support are behind Debian release cycle a couple of months!

* Code names release : Based on toy story names VS Based on minor planets solar system ; Theres no unstable name as sid in Devuan.

* technological modernity : mostly over 12 to 18 months vs 18+ months behind Debian ; Devuan are based on Debian work, so its more older respect fashion packages!

* Architectures : 16 vs 3 or 4 ? ; Devuan seems only have IBM-pc and ARM based/compatible

* Packages info site : packages.debian.org/ vs None . Quite strange that devuan does not have it… must use the console apt..

* Bug and reports : bugs.debian.org vs https://bugs.devuan.org/ ; Both uses reportbug system, same subsystem

* Release pages : debian.org/releases/ vs none ; Devuan only have devuan.org/os/releases but does not give specific info

* Projects and developing : alioth.debian.org/ vs git.devuan.org ; the devuan are a well knowed gitlab nterface..
* Package previews&reviews : mentors.debian.org vs git.devuan.org/devuan ; the Debian mentors are more easy...

Flavor: oldstable stable testing unstable experimental
Debian jessie Stretch buster sid experimental
Devuan N/A jeesie ascii ceres N/A
Winbuntu xenial yakketty zesty artful N/A
Mint nadya Sarah sonya N/A N/A

ORIGINAL INFO HERE: a complete overall comparision for users: http://qgqlochekone.blogspot.com/201...-guide-to.html