Devuan 4.0 'Chimaera' Systemd-Free Distro Released.
♞ Coming up on 9TO5Linux ♞
The development team behind the Devuan GNU+Linux distribution announced today the release and
general availability of Devuan GNU+Linux 4.0.
Dubbed “Chimaera” and based on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 11.1 “Bullseye”,
Devuan GNU+Linux 4.0 comes with Linux kernel 5.10 LTS by default and a choice of three
init systems, including sysvinit, runit, and OpenRC.
Devuan is the GNU/Linux distribution you must download and use if you want to have a Debian
GNU/Linux operating system installation without the systemd init system. Devuan is here for
software freedom lovers!
This release also improves desktop and display manager support, making all the desktop environments
from Debian GNU/Linux available to Devuan users without systemd and adding support for
the GDM3 and SDDM display managers.
Furthemore, it adds new themes to the bootloader, display manager and desktop environment. On
top of that, Devuan GNU+Linux 4.0 comes with enhanced accessibility, allowing users to
install the operating system via GUI or console using software or hardware speech synthesis,
or using a refreshable braille display.
Moreover, this release adds the ability to install desktop environments without the PulseAudio
sound server, which enables speech synthesis two work simultaneously on both console and
GUI sessions.
You can download Devuan GNU+Linux 4.0 right now from the official website or by clicking
the direct download link below. There are both live (64-bit) and installable-only (32-bit
and 64-bit) ISOs available for download, along with a Minimal Live ISO. The live session
uses the Xfce 4.16 desktop environment by default.
Existing Devuan 3.0 “Beowulf” users will be able to upgrade their installations using
these instructions. On the other hand, Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” users are able
to migrate to Devuan Chimaera by following these instructions.
With Devuan 4.0 out the door, the development team will now focus their efforts on the next
major release, Devuan 5.0, codenamed “Daedalus.” Devuan 5.0 repositories are already available
for those brave enough to the test the upcoming release on their PCs, which will be based
on Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm.”
:: More ::
The Devuan community has announced the release of Devuan 4.0 with code name Chimaera, which
strives to make GNU/Linux free of systemd.
Devuan came into existence in 2014 as a result of Debian shifting to systemd after a long
technical and much publicized debate. The move led to several Debian developers coming
together to create Devuan by removing all traces of systemd from the Linux distro, instead
sticking to the well-known init system, sysvinit.
The name Devuan was chosen as a blend word, formed from parts of two others – “Debian”
and “VUA“. And if you’re curious what “VUA” means, it’s the shortened form
of Veteran Unix Admins.
Devuan aims to be a base GNU/Linux distribution to protect Init Freedom and grant backward
compatibility for existing sysvinit users on Debian.
Now you are probably wondering, what’s wrong with systemd? It’s a long story and the
objections are both technical and political. A discussion for another day. So let’s now
focus on the new Devuan 4.0 release.
What’s New in Devuan 4.0
The first thing you’ll notice about Devuan is how quickly it booted, because usage of
sysvinit, which is the init system of choice of Devuan. Of course, during installation
you may also prefer to use some other init system such as openrc or runit.
Devuan continues to be based on Debian, and the latest version of the distro, Devuan 4.0
is based on Debian 11 “Bullseye”.
One of the things it inherits from Debian is support for a wide range of hardware architectures.
Devuan is one of the few distros that still continues to put out installation media for
32-bit x86 systems, in addition to the popular 64-bit platform. Furthermore, Devuan also
supports the arm64, armel, armhf, and ppc64el architectures.
Devuan is an Xfce distro by default. However, it provides MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, and LXQt
in its repos. Virtually all desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan
4.0. The latest version of the distro comes with KDE Plasma 5.20, Cinnamon 4.8, MATE 1.24,
and Xfce 4.16 desktop environments available in the distro repos.
Installation via GUI or console can now be accomplished via software or hardware speech
synthesis, or using a refreshable braille display, and Devuan Chimaera has the ability
to install desktop environments without PulseAudio, allowing speech synthesis in both console
and GUI sessions at the same time.
Futhermore, Devuan 4.0 comes with new boot, display manager and desktop theming. And in
conclusion, if you are curious, the next Devuan 5.0 release will be codenamed ‘Daedalus’.
Download
You can obtain the latest release of Devuan installation ISO from the project’s download
page. The Devuan ISO can be written to the drive with the dd tool.
There are two mechanisms for installing Devuan. One, via the Live CD, which uses the Refracta
Installer, and the other via the install-only media, which uses a modified Debian installer.
Thanks for watching,
I hope you enjoyed this video,
If you did hit that thumbs up button, it helps me to make good content for you, other then
that, I will see you in tomorrow's video, peace out.