Armbian Devuan Based?

[freezr]

Hi Folks,

 

this is just out of the blue but Armbian based on Devuan would be very cool.

 

I find more manageable and predictable Devuan than Debian, I am slowing ditching Debian for Devuan, I recently tested both on some very little Linux compatible laptops and Devuan resulted in better compatibility and lesser weird issue with ACPI and LID operations. I use Runit as default init system and for desktop use I found it very stable: for instance when connected to the wifi printer if the printer goes in standby systemd is unable to reconnect to the scanner (you to restart sane) while runit is always on; there are plenty on these little cases where Devuan is out of my way, while I have to constantly checking my son's laptop for what is not working and unavoidable it is always some systemd units failing for unknown reasons.

 

That's my experience, thanks!

 

F.

[c0rnelius]

Although this is doable. It would be a fairly large undertaking.  Any services and custom services currently used, would need a sysvinit equivalent. Then there is the question, would this also need to be integrated into armbian-config?  Probably, yes. Would all features in armbian-config even be supported in Devuan? I seriously doubt it. Also depending on how debs specific to Armbian are currently put together and the depends they may or may not have, those would also need to be modified.

 

Plus it would need to be extensively tested. I have found some scripts I run that are linked to services sometimes need modification when using them on Devuan. 

 

For a lot of boards though, on a basic level. It could be done.

[freezr]

I can understand what you say albeit the difference between Devuan and Debian is very minimal.

[TRS-80]

On 8/24/2023 at 7:10 PM, freezr said:

the difference between Devuan and Debian is very minimal

 

That's not the problem, the problem is the extra workload in modifying (and then maintaining) whatever parts of Armbian to support the 2 different init systems (as c0rnelius already went into some detail about).

 

And we barely have the resources to do what we do already...

 

Having said that, if it is something you feel strongly enough about, have at it.  But as c0rnelius pointed out, you would probably have your work cut out for you.

[freezr]

@TRS-80

 

Clearly is an extra burden, now I realized that is not so easy. Thanks.