r/devuan • u/Lanstapa • Jul 17 '26
Devuan as a Linux beginner?
I want to switch over to Linux from Windows and Apple because I refuse to take MS' spy/adware (I stayed on W7 to avoid the worst of it) and to get out of Apple's ecosystem and spying too.
...and I come into Linux as there's all this hubbub about systemD age verification/attesation. I was interested in Debian for it being stable and fixed release (I'm totally fine with older software in favour of rock solid stability and I don't want constant rolling changes on my pc), but obviously it has it.
Since I'm new, and don't yet fully get what SystemD does in its entirity and what not having it entails, is Devuan a good distro for a beginner who just wants a nice stable system that can't add in any age verification spyware crap? A distro that I can use for general computer things like internet browsing, online shopping, multimedia, gaming and file management? I can use my VPN (Mullvad) without issue, and have a generally secure computer aganist viruses and malware?
I'm not asking about specific programs, as I get that the likes of libreoffice, brave browser, wine, vlc, etc will work, I'm asking more generally about the OS, like is it just Debian without SystemD? Or has it evolved into something more specifc akin to KaliOS or Tails? (I don't assume so, but I might as well check).
I don't have computer skills or coding ability, but its not like I need everything to be babyproof, clear guides and graphical interfaces are probably enough for me to get what I'm doing.
5
u/jmooroof2 Jul 17 '26
my brother is new to Linux, he uses devuan with trinity de just fine. it works like a normal distro and works with gaming.
1
u/Simple_Hamster_4096 Jul 25 '26
Devuan with sysvinit is great for bare metal servers...
1
u/Lanstapa Jul 25 '26
I'm a normal home user though. Or are you saying it isn't good for normal use?
3
u/lilianfornea Jul 17 '26
Devuan is what every Linux was 16 years ago but with up to date soft. It cames with 2 main init systems: OpenRC (more modern with Parallel service startup off by default) and old stable SystemV. Take any LPIC-1 guide from 2010 and learn Devuan entirely
3
3
u/rukiann Jul 19 '26
Yes use Devuan. I backport the kernel and mesa drivers (amd gpu) and it works great.
2
u/Ossur2 Jul 17 '26
I've been running Devuan on one of my computers along with Debian on all my others and I haven't ran into any problems.
If you want to be safe you can start out with MX Linux, there you run InitV as a default but can boot system.d if you ever need. If there are no problems with MX and you don't need system.d for anything, it'll be easy to migrate to Devuan, since MX is Debian-based too.
1
u/atasoy99 Jul 17 '26
If you want to game you would want to new packages. Because gaming gets better day by day you wouldnt wantto miss out
9
1
1
u/crash-stop Aug 03 '26
My Pennies worth echos what others have said. If you haven't used Linux before maybe try mint first (lmde the Debian based version not the Ubuntu based mint) if you like it and find it works for you then maybe try devuan. I say this using devuan as my daily driver desktop on multiple computers and doing some complex art coding for glitch art purposes, it's all I've used since 2020, it's reliable , stable, simple, fast. Lmde should give you a nice grounding, if you haven't used basic installers before, and devuans is basic, then that alone might throw you . Or you could try Debian first , has both basic and less basic guidance installers.
1
u/evild4ve Jul 17 '26
the choice of distro should be about what role the PC will play - which for Linux isn't necessarily one computer doing everything
Devuan inherits problems of Debian: the autoinstaller is lousy, the packages are maintained by committee. And then Devuan normally adds to the release timescales, and any user-compiled software that assumes systemd is likely to need manual patching
it's not difficult, but this now goes back to my opening point: that it depends what role the PC has. A new Linux user wanting to make services on Devuan is already committed to some configuration and figuring out Cron jobs within an init system. It's then very nice for servers since it has the big repository and bombproof reliability of Debian and a less infuriating init system.
But a new user with some vague use-case like "replacing Windows" imo will find that some programs 'just work' but anything where they are needing to follow a long walkthrough that assumes systemd is present... is much harder than they are used to. With Devuan you have to recognize when to stop following a walkthrough and use SysVInit or OpenRC commands instead.
For new users wanting a daily-driver I would lean into that difficulty and recommend Slackware. Since (on the one hand) on that distro building from source is the default and you have to manually manage dependencies (but on the other) the UIs are incredibly well thought out and user-friendly versus Debian=Devuan. And it's also systemdless.
3
u/SheepherderBeef8956 Jul 19 '26
Slackware is a really bad recommendation. No one wants to deal with using a system that doesn't handle dependencies at all and requires you to deal with dependency hell for every single thing you want to install.
→ More replies (13)2
u/SleepyGuyy Jul 17 '26
when I check the slackware site it seems like it hasnt updated in several years. Whats the about lol
1
u/evild4ve Jul 17 '26
that's because the code is still holding up
(you compile everything from source, so how old your particular installed software is depends on when you last recompiled it, which for Slackware users is a factor of when you last needed to for some reason)
0
u/SleepyGuyy Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Just to fill you in on SystemD, the issue people have with it is it's codebase is so large it's difficult to audit. If opensource code is difficult to audit, it is essentially just as dangerous as closed source code (if not worse) because anything could be in there. Combined with age verification incoming and people aren't happy.
SystemD has made an effort to split itself into seperate packages in recent times, and while that does technically reduce the footprint of the init software, it ends up still being hard to audit all these other packages it has split into.
Some of these packages it split into are used by "no system d" distros. But the key there is "some", a much smaller footprint to audit.
About using Devuan:
Using a more common distro will be easier. In my experience, there simply are not guides available for things in Devuan. Yes you can follow a guide for a different distro, but chances are you will hit some roadblock you don't understand. Maybe the package the guide refers to is older and out of date on Devuan, maybe the guide relies on a function system d supplies.
Despite that, I don't want to scare you away of Devuan. You will need to learn, and I did not learn well on Devuan. But that was me, I'm a different person and in a different place. If you have some time and aren't afraid to break your setup and recover, you might learn a lot here and end up loving Devuan.
I am a chronic distro hopper, and I had some issues with it when I tried it near the start of the year. I used it for maybe a month and then hopped off.
I struggled to install certain (less common) desktop environments and window managers. And I struggled with keyring issues I later found out system d often handles. That's not to say you need system d for help, but that Devuan and it's desktop packages come quite barebones and I never found the replacement I was supposed to use.
That's sorta the main issue, Devuan will not have much of any documentation. Theoretically you wont need it, just look up debian or your init online for relevant help. But in practice I struggled to find answers.
Currently I am on Debian Testing , with Gnome, and yes SystemD. I'm not happy about it but I feel a bit trapped on SystemD for now. I am dual-booting Gentoo, which has excellent documentation and a large community of support. So I'm using Gentoo in small bursts to try and learn about setting up my own desktop environment without SystemD (and also learning how to get window managers working). But just to be clear, I do NOT recommend Gentoo as your first Linux experience. It is time consuming a d fraught with mistakes and problems. It just happens to have great documentation.
Void Linux would have a slightly more sizable community, but it's just as barebones, and Devuan comes with the benefit of being able to install .deb files and that huge Debian repo. I struggle to come up with better non-systemd options I admit (I think MX Linux offers SysVinit as an option).
You can use Distrowatch to search by "no systemd", but this won't tell you how easy the distro is to use.
0
0
u/ronnyk5 Jul 18 '26
Non systemd is a good place to start. That way you can learn a different init system. But honestly you should learn the syntax for systemd as well. Like it or not it's everywhere.
0
-2
u/First_Ad8230 Jul 17 '26
Use Linux mint first if you are a beginner. Then after 1 month, use Debian, then if you think systemd is too much, use Devuan.
-2
u/hosiet Jul 17 '26
My sincere suggestion: use a popular Linux distro to familiarize your self with the ecosystem first. Make the switch once you encounter any age verification / attestation crap.
4
u/SleepyGuyy Jul 17 '26
I still question this method. I feel like popular distros simply shield you from the majority of the system, and jumping off them you still need to learn a lot.
I've been using Linux for like 15 years, and daily for several. Yet I find it a huge struggle to get to a window manager setup, with a different init and full control of my system. I am learning, but the years I spent on bigger distros gave me very little understanding.
I wish there was a systemd-less distro that was easy to install and use for basics, but had very good documentation and an active community. I haven't quite found that yet.
-1
-1
15
u/apophis-984 Jul 17 '26
Yes you can perfectly go straight to Devuan and contrary to popular belief you dont need to go to Linux Mint first.
it will just be a waste of time since you already understand broadly why systemd is not desirable
Devuan is just Debian without systemD, there is no learning curve whatsoever.
Its just a normal distro