The release of the Devuan 6.0 "Excalibur" distribution has been announced, a fork of Debian GNU/Linux, delivered without the system manager systemd. This new branch is notable for its shift to the Debian 13 package base. Live builds (1.7 GB) and installation ISO images for the amd64 architecture are available for download. Packages are compiled for the architectures i386, amd64, armel, armhf, arm64, ppc64el, and riscv64.
The project supports branches for about 400 Debian packages, which have been modified to eliminate dependencies on systemd, rebranded, or adapted to the specifics of the Devuan infrastructure. Two packages (devuan-baseconf, jenkins-debian-glue-buildenv-devuan) are found only in Devuan and are related to repository configuration and build system operation. Otherwise, Devuan is fully compatible with Debian and can be used as a base for creating specialized Debian builds without systemd. Devuan-specific packages can be downloaded from the packages.devuan.org repository.
The default desktop is based on Xfce and the Slim display manager. KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt, and Sway are optionally available for installation. Instead of systemd, the classic SysVinit initialization system is included, with optional support for openrc and runit. It allows for operation without D-Bus, enabling minimalist desktop configurations using window managers like blackbox, fluxbox, fvwm, fvwm-crystal, and openbox. For network configuration, a NetworkManager variant is offered, independent of systemd. Instead of systemd-udev, eudev, a fork of udev from the Gentoo project, is utilized. ConsoleKit is used for user session management in Xfce and MATE, while elogind, a systemd-independent variant of logind, is used in other desktops.
Changes in Devuan 6 mainly revolve around the transition to Debian 13 package base and Linux kernel 6.12, along with modifications to ensure support for the sysvinit, runit, and OpenRC initialization systems. Support for session logging in the /run/utmp file has been restored, as the support time for the distribution will end before the 2038 problem begins to manifest. Similar to Debian, executable files and libraries have been moved from the root partition to the /usr partition (with /bin, /sbin, and /lib* set up as symbolic links to the corresponding directories within /usr). The creation of installation builds and kernel packages for 32-bit x86 systems has been discontinued, but the presence of an officially supported package repository and multi-arch repository has been maintained. Builds for the riscv64 architecture have been added.
Source: opennet.ru
