Devuan

Devuan is an open source operating system, based on Debian, it is a Linux distribution that aims to maintain compatibility and usability with other alternative init systems to avoid lock-in by systemd. Devuan offers sysvinit, runit and OpenRC as alternatives to systemd.

Devuan is an open source operating system, based on Debian, it is a Linux distribution that aims to maintain compatibility and usability with other alternative init systems to avoid lock-in by systemd. Devuan offers sysvinit, runit and OpenRC as alternatives to systemd. ==Design principles== With the release of Debian 8, some developers and users started feeling alienated due to the project's adoption of systemd and removal of support of other existing init systems. This decision led to some Debian community members and developers to start a free-to-use fork of Debian without the use of systemd. Devuan is very similar to Debian, like, it ships with Firefox ESR as the default browser. But they have some differences too, for example, Devuan's default and preferred desktop environment is XFCE. ==History== Instead of continuing the Debian practice of using Toy Story character names as release codenames, Devuan aliases its releases using minor planet names. The first stable release shared the Debian 8 codename Jessie. However, the Devuan release was named for minor planet 10464. The first stable release of Devuan was published on May 25, 2017. Devuan 2.0.0 ASCII was released on the 9th of June on 2018¹, version 2.1 was released on the 21st of November on 2019. This release provideded a choice of five different desktop environments at install time (offering XFCE, Cinnamon, KDE, LXQt, MATE), also having different window managers available in the repositories. It also provides installation options for choosing between sysvinit and OpenRC for the base init system. Also including an option between GRUB and LILO as the boot loader/manager. Devuan maintains a modified version of the Debian expert text installer, which has the ability to install only free software if the user chooses explicitly, while the live desktop image also initiates a customized graphical installer from Refracta (a derivative of Devuan.) Devuan 3.0.0 Beowulf was released on June 3, 2020, based on Debian 10.4. Ppc64el has been added to the list of supported architectures. runit is now available as an alternative init system. Eudev and elogind are now used to replace some systemd functionality. Devuan 4.0 Chimaera was released on October 14, 2021. It is based on Debian Bullseye (11.1) which made the use of the Linux kernel version 5.10 Devuan 5.0 Daedalus was released on August 15, 2023. It is based on Debian Bookworm (12.1) provided with Linux kernel version 6.1, there are a few new changes in Devuan's rootless startx for handling X11 servers, was now making the use of libseat1, this change enhanced user experience and the way for smoother and much more efficient operations, there is now a new Wayland GUI support without requiring the usage of elogind like Sway Devuan 6.0 Excalibur was released on November 2, 2025. It is based on Debian Trixie (13) with Linux kernel 6.12. ==Packages== Devuan has its own package repository which mirrors upstream Debian, with local modifications made only when needed to allow for init systems other than systemd. Devuan does not provide systemd in its repositories but still retains libsystemd0 until it has removed all dependencies. Amprolla is the program used to merge Debian packages with Devuan packages. It downloads packages from Debian and merges changes to packages that Devuan overrides. According to Repology the number of packages in Devuan Excalibur/6.1 is less but close to Debian Trixie/13.7; Devuan's unstable repository is almost identical to Debian's unstable in terms of available packages. ==Version history== Source: ==References==

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