Debian is forked. Meet Devuan

by
in linux on (#2VAR)
Well, they said they would do it, and they did. A group of Debian loyalists took great issue with the systemd issue in Debian, and threatened they'd fork it if Debian moved forward with its plans to replace trusty old System V init script with the new systemd system developed by RedHat's Lennert Poettering. A week ago, the Debian board voted to move forward with systemd, and the trigger was pulled.

World, meet Devuan. It's pronounced "Dev One" and is backed by a team of "veteran system admins" who prefer the stability and simplicity of the System V init scripts, and frankly aren't overly pleased with a lot of the other recent decisions made at Debian either. They state recent decisions have been too overly influenced by RedHat's developers and are prioritizing Linux desktops over Linux servers, which is not smart given Debian's huge lead in server systems and its relatively small desktop market share.

Forking Debian is no simple matter, and a simple glance at Distrowatch.org serves as a reminder Debian is the underpinning of a huge number of other distros out there. Where to begin? Here:
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 while continuing it on a different path: free from bloat as a minimalist base distro should be. Our objective for the spring of 2015 is that users will be able to switch from Debian 7 to Devuan 1 smoothly, as if they would dist-upgrade to Jessie, and start using our package repositories.

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 hierarchy and bureaucracy beyond real cases of emergency. We are well conscious this is possible for us mostly because of starting small again; we will do our best to not repeat the same mistakes and we welcome all Debian Developers willing to join us on this route.
The Devuan distribution will make an effort to improve the relationship with both upstream and downstream and, particularly in its gestational phase, will do its best to accommodate needs of those downstream distributions willing to adopt it as base. We look forward to statements of interest from such distributions, as well 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". Devuan perceives itself not as an end product, but a starting point for developers, a viable base for sysadmins and a stable tool for people who have experience of Debian. Devuan will never compromise for more efficiency at the cost of the the freedom of its users, rather than leave such concerns to the independent choices made by downstream developers.
They've got a lot of work ahead of them, and are happy to receive both donations and developers. Want to know how you can help? Check them out on Github and the Freenode IRC network, for starters.
Reply 53 comments

One Problem (Score: 3, Insightful)

by venkman@pipedot.org on 2014-11-28 21:04 (#2VAY)

The amount of fanfare given for this announcement is much more than is warranted, but in any case I wish the team well. Based on one thing though, I do believe they have already shown that this fork is more an ideological exercise than an effort to make a distro that is better for users. Picking a name is important and the team has failed miserably. If you have to explain how to pronounce it, you lose interest of potential users. Why not just pick a simple name?

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by tanuki64@pipedot.org on 2014-11-28 21:09 (#2VAZ)

The amount of fanfare given for this announcement is much more than is warranted,
Agreed. Too early for that.
If you have to explain how to pronounce it, you lose interest of potential users.
Ummm... don't think so. How do you pronounce 'Qt'? I rarely speak names, since I mostly communicate with colleagues via mail or forums. And Devuan is very good for googling.

Re: One Problem (Score: 3, Interesting)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-28 21:19 (#2VB0)

I think it works. Anyone who's ever ordered Sechuan chicken will know how to say it. The V in the middle is clearly a reference to SysV. It's short, simple, and I'm imagining a logo like dV, which would work.

There are far worse names out there - just search this site for Friday Distros.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by venkman@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 01:27 (#2VB6)

I guess you're right. Maybe I was just hoping a fork could right the wrong of Debian's name coming from "Deb + Ian".

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:26 (#2VB9)

Which makes recent antifeminist comments quite funny in the light that the OS is named after a woman. Perhaps if this was more widely known some people would not bother submitting crap casino games if they knew :)

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:58 (#2VBC)

A woman who divorced Ian?
Yea that really proves something, maybe not what you're getting at.

When Debian was named the Ian was a romantic.
Now he's a realist. No reason to change the name tho. No airbrushing of history.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 04:47 (#2VBH)

Thanks for the history lesson. Never knew that.

Now I am wondering if the hard heads will come forward and demand that .deb be changed to .ian with a distro name of Ian
Maybe we could have a poll to see what names Debian would be if this held sway. Ian? Ianalone? Iandme? JustIan? IanOne? Ianian? This could be humorous (special note: only for those with a sense of humor) :)

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 10:08 (#2VBV)

Wow, I never knew that either. A better lesson for 'why not to do business with/name things after people you love' has never existed.

I were him, after the divorce I would've renamed it "Dorkian" or "Dumbian" as a reminder.

Re: One Problem (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 08:10 (#2VDE)

Hans Reiser had the correct solution to the problem you describe.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by wootery@pipedot.org on 2014-12-01 14:34 (#2VF7)

I were him, after the divorce I would've renamed it "Dorkian" or "Dumbian" as a reminder.
And, in so demonstrating your emotional maturity, you'll also avoid the complications that accompany remarrying!

Re: One Problem (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-08 07:13 (#2VQ4)

Hans Reiser had the correct solution to the problem you describe.

Hans Reiser did the right thing.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by hairyfeet@pipedot.org on 2014-12-09 03:37 (#2VR9)

Nah just follow Johnny Carson's lead and make sure every girl you marry afterwards has the same first name...problem solved!

Re: One Problem (Score: 2, Funny)

by majortom@pipedot.org on 2014-12-02 19:24 (#2VH1)

I guess it is really "Deb - Ian" now, but form your list I like "Justian" it's easy to say, easy to remember and a little tongue-in-cheek

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-03 13:09 (#2VHZ)

That... is so terrible it is Good. I commend you, Sir

Re: One Problem (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:47 (#2VBB)

I just asked my Chinese gf how to pronounce it. She gave several variations none of which included DevOne.

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 09:46 (#2VBT)

Ha ha! Maybe zafiro17 meant "the way Americans who don't speak Chinese say it."

Double ha ha - my captcha starts "Rice, white, .."

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2014-12-01 15:04 (#2VF8)

Disagree about the ease in pronouncing. If it were on a Chinese menu, sure I'd probably pronounce it correctly. But English is my first language, and its pronunciation rules are F'd up beyond belief. Its completely out of context in a tech setting, and you can be certain that many people will mispronounce it, just like every other name for things we have. So while its no worse than others, its certainly not any better.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:16 (#2VB8)

The Google issue is very important and must be considered carefully. Some product name choices lead users lost when trying to find help online. Google itself failed here by reusing common words. Companies spend millions to find product named which are unique and clear. Tiilda comes to mind as good example here. Go Devuan!

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:33 (#2VBA)

Agreed with the pronounciation issue, I see it as 'doovian'. This will not be the only distro with multiple names. Go Suse! Or SuSe. Or is that SoosE? Maybe Suzi? The slackers I once worked with spend several days debating this.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 10:44 (#2VBY)

I think we had similar discussions about Ubuntu, back in the day: Is it /Ū/BŪN/TŪ/ or /Ə/bƏn/tū/ or what?

Face it: this was nothing more than a pretext to test |.'s Unicode support.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 10:45 (#2VBZ)

Result: |. got all the diacriticals but refused the smiley face at the end. Awright, no smileys here then.
Heart:
Note:
Rook:

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-11-30 13:45 (#2VDX)

Woot! I guess it worked. From the FAQ:
Unicode characters for most languages and useful symbols (like math, currency, and punctuation) are allowed. Dingbats, smiley faces, non-printing characters, right-to-left switchers, and other gibberish are filtered.

Re: One Problem (Score: 1)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2014-12-01 17:56 (#2VFN)

Comment was used for testing more obscure, utf-8 chars. They were all stripped. I thought they were legit, but probably not needed. No one really speaks those languages much these days.

Re: One Problem (Score: 5, Interesting)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 10:11 (#2VBW)

To be fair, not malicious, the amount of excitement isn't unlike when a bunch of us left Slashdot. Yeah, maybe our new project sinks and maybe it swims. But at least it's invigorating to be DOING something about a problem instead of just sucking it up in silence.

I wish them luck, if only to see what they come up with - I think they'll essentially create a product with values/choices like FreeBSD but based on Linux. That's a good thing - people choose Debian for stability. There's enough discontent out there that it's possible to get this machine rolling.

Re: One Problem (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 15:34 (#2VCC)

Like Linux (lee-nucks, lih-nux, lee-nooks, etc)?

The Lead Dev has maintained a distro before. (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 02:59 (#2VBD)

The Lead Dev (Jsomething) has maintained a distro before.
He's an Italian guy with an afro.

His old distro was one of the only that supported wireless way back when.

So I'd say they have some talent already that can pull it off.
Sounds like they're starting small, join and they can go bigger.

Re: The Lead Dev has maintained a distro before. (Score: 2, Informative)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 12:28 (#2VC4)

I've been hanging out on the Devuan IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #devuan or #debianfork).

Here's the guy behind Devuan - seems talented/committed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaromil
Here's a suggested/submitted logo that didn't seem that popular when discussed. It's a start, anyway: http://k30.kn3.net/2/1/A/4/F/A/3BD.jpg (seems a bit too metal/cryptic for my tastes).

Re: The Lead Dev has maintained a distro before. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 08:13 (#2VDG)

That logo's pretty fucking metal.
+1

No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 03:33 (#2VBE)

So no Gnome 3, I guess. Good. What about GTK3 ? I use XFCE, which depends on it, so I hope it's included. What I'd really like is a re-write of XFCE that uses QT.

Re: No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 2, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 03:51 (#2VBF)

Use GTK2 and an older XFCE version.
Most versions of XFCE don't need GTK3, which fucks alot of things up.

Re: No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 1)

by tanuki64@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 12:26 (#2VC3)

Why not Gnome3? The problem is not Gnome3, pulseaudio, systemd, the problem is to make choice hard. It was easy for me not to use Gnome. To not to use pulseaudio I just had to kill the process. However, when suddenly more and more services are written, so they won't work without systemd anymore.... it makes me nervous. Regardless of the systemd quality.

Re: No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 15:57 (#2VCE)

Gnome3 without systemd would require a fork of Gnome3, which already exists in the form of Cinnamon. This was one of the big parts of what started the systemd uproar in the first place, with weight being thrown around to manipulate independent software projects on the part of the Redhat/systemd cabal.

You don't like that you can't use Gnome3 without systemd? Might want to take it up with Poettering.

Re: No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 1)

by tanuki64@pipedot.org on 2014-11-29 16:24 (#2VCF)

Thanks for the info. Did not know this since I do not use Gnome. But yes, this is what I fear: Too strong dependencies between different unrelated packages. Ok, Debian is not Gentoo. Most distributions have to choose one configuration, which supposedly meets the requirements of most of its users. But I must say, sometimes Debian feels like a bowl of spaghetti... you want to install one package, and it pulls in half of the world. Often with no discernible relation to the desired package. I don't care much about systemd. Some say it is badly codes... so what, it will improve over the years. But it looks like it is poisonous in so far that it reduces choice. And that would be a sad thing. I certainly will watch Devuan.

Re: No Gnome 3, right? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-01 16:17 (#2VFD)

Xfce is still powered by gtk2, isn't it?

Inevitable with Debian (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-29 06:05 (#2VBN)

This was inevitable. Some years ago Debian welcomed do-nothing women into the fold (Debian-women)
They then kicked out any anti-feminist man from Debian (example: Ted Walther). Today any new
debian developer is vetted by the debian-women.

Techis love feminists. They love social justice warriors. They love the world they live in
where they are eternally denied power, respect, so on and so forth. They enjoy being
cattle prodded towards "Strong" women, and denied young girls.

They love this change that has occured in the world: it becoming a woman's world, rather than a man's.
They love that they would be imprisoned if they ever tried to marry a young girl
(Allowed in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 22 28-29, hebrew).
They love to be hearded and forced. That is the kind of men they are.
And thus, is it any wonder, that They love the SystemD.

--MikeeUSA--

Re: Inevitable with Debian (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 02:32 (#2VCZ)

+1 Awesome! Way to go Mikee, couldn't agree more...

Okay, okay, I'm just fuck'n with you! But see how nice that felt? You could have more of that if you would just stop being such an ignorant ass.

Re: Inevitable with Debian (Score: -1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 08:12 (#2VDF)

Debian changed trajectory at that time. Nothing will change the truth, regardless if the truth is enjoyable or not.

Re: Inevitable with Debian (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 08:30 (#2VDH)

"do nothing", from the man who's only contribution to the free software community is a crappy casino game, and ideologies that mostly died with hitler.

i think you're butthurt all these chicks code circles around you. Google's head of security is a woman, far more talented, and making far more money than you ever will. you can say its cause shes a girl, but the simple fact is -she is more skilled than you-

a "Man" knows when to 'Man-UP" and take responsibility for sucking at life.

Re: Inevitable with Debian (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-08 07:11 (#2VQ3)

You seem to be uninformed if you think "who's only contribution to the free software community is a crappy casino game"
Very uninformed. But I guess that's good. You can't attack what you don't know about.

Re: Inevitable with Debian (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-08 07:15 (#2VQ5)

Women are garbage. The ancients knew this. That is why their brides were girl children, not women.

Poor name choice... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 02:24 (#2VCY)

Did anybody else think of Microsoft when reading 'DevOne' for the first time?

Bacon-theory aside, the 'Dev' part could give people the wrong impression that the distro is geared towards developers or research and not intended for production servers...

Re: Poor name choice... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 21:55 (#2VE9)

Good point, why not something like Serval, pronounced Serve-All?

Re: Poor name choice... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-11-30 22:15 (#2VEA)

Let's fork Duvean and give it q better name! Tersal?

Debian is forked (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-12-01 08:46 (#2VEZ)

I agree with 100% certainty in all probability and posibility. So... what are we going to do?

Godwin (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-01-14 23:37 (#2WQC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSbNumR9Z8k