Non-systemd Linux -- First Success Post

I've had nothing but trouble trying to install a non-systemd Linux distribution (see here for why) on my Raspberry Pi 5.

No need to belabor the details -- some things just don't work, and others require a bunch of command line messing around to make work, and my whole approach as a Linux evangelist is "make this easier than Windoze for people." For the Pi, it's simply not easier than Windoze (or easier than Raspberry Pi OS, which is easy as, well, pie).

On my x86 PC, however, it took me about 10 minutes to get Devuan Linux up and running, and nine of those minutes were downloading the disk image and burning it to a USB drive. Once I'd done that, all I had to do was reboot my machine to boot from the USB. Loaded right up, and once I logged into a wifi network I was ready to do things.

The first thing I did was move the task bar from the top to the bottom because that's how I like it.

The second thing I did (after taking the screenshot above) was open up Firefox (which comes preinstalled) so that I could write this post.

As I'm writing the post, I'm also installing some stuff on the live CD version to test out -- I want to know certain things work and that I like the feel before doing a full hard drive install and replacing Linux Mint on my main machine. I expect that the full install will take a little longer than a live CD run, but not much -- basically just telling it I prefer the US keyboard layout and US Eastern time zone, that kind of thing.

So far, so good.  Once I've had some time to mess around with Devuan, I suspect I'll be able to honestly recommend it at least to those who want to avoid systemd, and possibly just overall as a good Linux distro for people who want to get away from Windoze but don't want the getaway plan to be complicated.

Devuan Linux VERY First Impression

I'm auditioning non-systemd Linux distributions (per this previous post), and the first candidate is Devuan Linux.

My very, very, very early impression is three words long:

Not for beginners.

Here's why:

These days, most Linux distributions are at least as easy as, usually easier than, Microsoft Windoze to install and configure.

Devuan clearly isn't.

The first part is: Get an installation medium with the operating system's image on it, and boot from that medium. I did that by grabbing the Devuan package for my CPU (the Raspberry Pi 5's Arm 64-bit chip), burning it to an SD card, putting the SD card in the Pi (and removing the USB SSD that I normally run the Pi off of), and turning the Pi on.

At the second part, it goes sideways from a novice's point of view, though.

With most Linux distributions, that first boot shows some text scrolling along as the OS does things, then a lovely welcome/configure screen opens up and you do a few simple things like telling it what time zone you're in, what wifi or ethernet network to connect to, etc. Boom -- a graphical user interface opens up and you're off and running.

The first thing Devuan does is ask you for your login and password. And of course, having never used this OS before, you don't have a login or password. Looked that one up -- the default login is "devuan" and the default password is "devuan."

And then you're just at a Linux command line after a prompt letting you know you'll need to run menu-config to get any further.

At which point you discover things like:

1.  That it expects an ethernet, not wifi, connection, and that you're going to have to do some command line stuff outside of menu-config to change that.
2. That you have to install your graphical user interface of choice (I recommend XFCE, as do others),  which you must have said Internet connection to do.

That's as far as I've gone, because I have some other stuff to do this morning. I may get the installation, up to and through getting an Internet connection, installing a GUI, installing my browser of preference, etc. this weekend. Whenever that gets done, I'll up date you.

None of this is intended as a slam on Devuan -- just as notice that if you are brand new to Linux you may find the installation process intimidating. Variants like Ubuntu and Mint are akin to falling off a log in complexity, so unless you've got a specific reason to be looking at Devuan (such as the systemd thing), I wouldn't recommend Devuan as your first foray.

Side note: All this may be unique to the Raspberry Pi/Arm-64 version. I haven't yet looked at Devuan on an x86 machine; perhaps it has the warm and fuzzy install process!