Will there be a Devuan port for RPi1?

[Aydan]

Hello,

I'd like to know if there is a plan to provide a Raspbian/Devuan flavor, especially for the RaspberryPi1 versions.
I have a severe dislike for systemd on my "servers". Don't start a discussion about that, there's enough of those already on then net.
I suspect the Devuan guys will eventually provide images for the Pi2, I'm not so sure about the Pi1.

Regards
Aydan

[jbernardo]

For now you can still remove systemd (but remember to edit udev.conf). As for a devuan image, maybe it is better to ask the devuan devs directly. And if you find anything, let me know!

[fruitoftheloom]

Hello,

I'd like to know if there is a plan to provide a Raspbian/Devuan flavor, especially for the RaspberryPi1 versions.
I have a severe dislike for systemd on my "servers". Don't start a discussion about that, there's enough of those already on then net.
I suspect the Devuan guys will eventually provide images for the Pi2, I'm not so sure about the Pi1.

Regards
Aydan

The RPF have removed Raspbian Wheezy from Downloads Page, so it would by conclusion appear the answer is not going to happen.

Even the Devuan Project has not gained much traction, ALPHA4 at present ?

There are other OSes available like Slackware which has not gone SystemD

[Aydan]

The RPF have removed Raspbian Wheezy from Downloads Page, so it would by conclusion appear the answer is not going to happen.

Even the Devuan Project has not gained much traction, ALPHA4 at present ?

There are other OSes available like Slackware which has not gone SystemD

This question was more directed to the Raspbian maintainers. I think the Pi specific parts provided by the Foundation would work for both Debian and Devuan.

Regards
Aydan

[jamesh]

I cannot speak for the distro maintainers, but I suspect the work to provide two different distro's compared with the benefits, would make it a non-starter. It's quite a chunk of work just maintaining Raspbian.

[cyrano]

The RPF have removed Raspbian Wheezy from Downloads Page, so it would by conclusion appear the answer is not going to happen.

What? Why?

Even the Devuan Project has not gained much traction, ALPHA4 at present ?

That's where you are wrong. There are a lot of people waiting and development is going well.

If it was not for all kinds of hurdles being put up by the systemd crowd, it would be beta by now. Anyhow, it's running quite well. Not on the Pi yet, but it's being worked upon.

There are other OSes available like Slackware which has not gone SystemD

Is slackware available for the Pi? Hadn't noticed it.

[fruitoftheloom]

Is slackware available for the Pi? Hadn't noticed it.

http://rpi2.fatdog.eu

[cyrano]

Is slackware available for the Pi? Hadn't noticed it.

http://rpi2.fatdog.eu

Thx. Pi2 only, though. The search for another platform starts, I'm afraid...

[fruitoftheloom]

Is slackware available for the Pi? Hadn't noticed it.

http://rpi2.fatdog.eu

Thx. Pi2 only, though. The search for another platform starts, I'm afraid...

Obviously you would rather gripe than research. Slackware for ARMv6 RPi

http://rpi.fatdog.eu

[cyrano]

http://rpi2.fatdog.eu

Thx. Pi2 only, though. The search for another platform starts, I'm afraid...

Obviously you would rather gripe than research. Slackware for ARMv6 RPi

http://rpi.fatdog.eu

Yep. I overlooked the one very short link to the other part of the site. On the Pi 1 page, it's a lot clearer...

[Aydan]

Since last week I'm running devuan on a Pi3. So my original question is still open, but at least for Pi2/3 Devuan can be used.

Regards
Aydan

[paulwratt]

Just FYI I had been using an ARM build of Devuan at the time of the OP. It was successfully updated at the time of the beta release, before there was a rpi image available for download. I patched it with a couple of binaries I used on Jessie & Wheezy (eject for lxde was one) and added sdl1.2 (was not available on Jessie at the time)

At the time of Devuan beta they were having issues extracting uDev from SystemD.

You can see vDevd here

Their FF browser build is mint too

They are already working on Jessie+ build

The original image came from the guy that builds LibreOS GNUinOS

[Aydan]

Just FYI I had been using an ARM build of Devuan at the time of the OP.

I know, and I've been using it on a Pi3, see my previous post. My question was about the Pi1 (and now Zero) where the normal armhf build will not work.

Regards
Aydan

[paulwratt]

there are lotsa OS's and versions or derivatives of them, so my 1st question to your question would be, what do you need to use tin Devuan that is not available in one of the (now many) arm6 hf OS images.

If you want speed and size, then I recommend PipaOS (Wheezy+Xgui or 512/256). go to the download directory, as it contains some newer images and a kernel folder

alternatively there is a couple of ways to build your own arm6 hf Devuan, and that is to point an APT-source to Devuan's src/source repo, and (using a Debian based OS) build the newer Jessie versions of any binaries from source through APT. That should work for any Wheezy based image.

If you dont need gui then there are quite a number that would be a good starting point.

I do realize tho that this is time consuming, eg. a full gcc 6.1 build takes something like 12 hours on a Pi. If however (like me) you have a spare Pi or 2, and a bit of time to do some research (chroot, sysroot, etc), you can let one chug away, possibly with someone elses (automated) OS distribution build scripts.

Basically I would say that the main reason why there is no Devuan armv6 hf is because noone who "needs it" has found a simple way, ie there are (maybe) lots who want it but aren't willing to give it a crack. It is not rocket science, but it will require some effort (ie time).

Another alternative is the approach I'm about to take: start with picore 8.0 or PipaOS (Xgui wheezy 3.5/ 5.0 guarana jessie) and build anything else from source, or a source repo (like Devuan). Storing the packages and build order and new dependencies for later user, or so someone can publicly host them.

I have a couple of non-ARM OS's that require manual installation to setup, but I want to be able to share the results (for various reasons) so I will use something like MegaNZ which allows 50Gb file access per free-user via an ssh type client. I chose MegaNz because they have well documented API, client sources, and some examples, enough code to build a FuseFS module, and enough flexibility to allow "on-demand-pull" so you would not have to install the whole OS at one time (like you do with an .img)

But thats me, and I have specific requirements too: command line autologin hotel wifi, cross-compilers, full SDL 1.2, customizable boot splash, non-standard R/W filesystems, etc

Its also very easy to build linux style OS yourself, but you really have to do a lot of reading to understand what makes a bare minimum OS usable, from console & ssh, or just as a binary runner (like Win10 IoT Pi)

Hope this gives someone some ideas, and hopefully it wont take me too long to make something usable available (I will try to remember arm6 hf as I have 2x Pi B doing nothing for 6 months now)

Paul

[Aydan]

It's not something that is in Devuan that I need, but something that is not in Devuan: Systemd.
And please, no discussions to why I dont want systemd, there's enough discussions about that already.
And I'm not going through the hassle of recompiling a whole OS for this. I'm not that desperate. Then I'd rather swap my Pi1's out against Pi2/3.
The original question was just that, a question of enventual support for Devuan on BCM2835. Now with the Zero around, maybe the Devuan guys have a bit more incentive to support armv6

Regards
Aydan

[jamesh]

It's not something that is in Devuan that I need, but something that is not in Devuan: Systemd.
And please, no discussions to why I dont want systemd, there's enough discussions about that already.
And I'm not going through the hassle of recompiling a whole OS for this. I'm not that desperate. Then I'd rather swap my Pi1's out against Pi2/3.
The original question was just that, a question of enventual support for Devuan on BCM2835. Now with the Zero around, maybe the Devuan guys have a bit more incentive to support armv6

Regards
Aydan

My question, does the current Raspbian on the PI1/Zero (with systemd I believe?) do what you need it to functionally do? What is is not doing that you need? What is it doing that you don't need?

If the answers to the above are simply "It has systemd", but there are otherwise no functionality issues , then you need to consider that since in all respects it works, it's not the OS that needs to change.

[paulwratt]

K, I believe the question here is, on ARM v6, not "does it do what you want", but "does it run systemd or not". These are different things.

@Aydan I believe the solution you are looking for is ViodLinux, which has Pi arm6 sdcard image. As bonus it is said to be super quick, and super lite (example, usable with Mate Desktop on Pi - youtube) and is my next "OS of choice", as I have issues with Raspbian Jessie & SystemD (especially kernal memory swap), which is why I still use (stable) Raspian Wheezy (which is also arm6)

Paul

[jojopi]

I have issues with Raspbian Jessie & SystemD (especially kernal memory swap)

What is the problem you are referring to? And if it is a kernel issue, then how does it relate to systemd?

[paulwratt]

I am glad to say this contents of this thread are now moot.

To answer the opening post: Yes there is a armv6 build of Devuan

As of the release of Beta 2, there is now a armel (not armhf) build of Devuan for ARMv6 devices
https://files.devuan.org/devuan_jessie_beta/embedded/

(I guess some of the other posts here are still vaguely interesting)

Cheers

Paul

[vader]

I've installed it on my pi2 and wow. Ok there was a lot of setup - it wasnt plug and play. I am also quite experienced in linux (its my job). The jessie based raspbian was almost unusable on my pi2. OS freezes, incredibly slow performance, regular crashes in what should be rock solid programs.

For those caring, I have a U4 class SD (95Mb/s) and turned swap off. Still slow. Devuan is usable. Give it a go!

[madtom1999]

FYI there appear to be images for Pi 1,2 and 3 here: https://files.devuan.org/devuan_jessie/embedded/ and the version for the 3 seems to be 64bit!

[fruitoftheloom]

FYI there appear to be images for Pi 1,2 and 3 here: https://files.devuan.org/devuan_jessie/embedded/ and the version for the 3 seems to be 64bit!

Though being based on unsupported end of life Debian Jessie is a downside:

devuan_jessie_1.0.0_arm64_raspi3.img.xz 23-May-2017

[hortimech]

Then use the images from here:

https://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/embedded/

Ascii = Stretch minus systemd

[jojopi]

The images that will boot on Pi1/Zero are still armel, however. Expect them to be noticeably slower than Raspbian for anything that uses floating point.

I also wonder whether Pi-specific stuff like the camera and various GPIO libraries will work. RPF/T have not supported armel userspace since the days of wheezy.