Devuan 6 “Excalibur” stable release is now available,
It’s based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, continuing Devuan’s mission of providing a systemd-free Debian alternative.
Like previous versions, Excalibur offers multiple init options (SysVinit (default), OpenRC, and runit) while staying compatible with most Debian packages and repositories.
It’s not “news” in the sense of something brand-new (Devuan has always been systemd-free), but it’s worth noting they’ve once again managed to track the latest Debian base without depending on systemd, which is an impressive feat given how deeply systemd is integrated upstream.
Official notes:
Let’s see how well this holds up against Debian or MX Linux for daily use. It’ll be interesting to hear how it performs in real-world setups.
My favorite every day distribution, antiX, is another Debian alternative that bucks the systemd trend. MX Linux has been using sysVinit for quite some time, but has not been truly 100% free of systemd because it has been using shims and other things; even Devuan isn’t as “clean” in some ways, but like antiX it has bucked systemd for years.
antiX 25 is currently in beta testing; it just opened Beta 1 yesterday,and it still has a number of bugs to overcome. But the calling card for antiX, even more than Devuan is a vigilant effort to completely remain free of any package that even calls a systemd dependency, thus requiring rebuilds of a lot of packages; not sure of the exact number, but I think between 100-200 packages have been rebuilt in antiX to avoid systemd. When Debian first made their decision to choose systemd and Devuan broke away, antiX started to work with Devuan but quickly surpassed them in every way. If you are a vigilant systemd avoider, I recommend learning more about antiX.
I’ve seen a couple different mentions now about being “anti-systemd” or “systemd free”. I would consider myself a noob when it comes to understanding how Linux truly operates and why being systemd free would be a benefit.
@Brian_Masinick I’ve seen you mention the antiX distribution a few times and you always speak highly of it.
To both of you, why would I want an operating system that is systemd free? What benefits would I gain? What would I lose?
Recently I was trying to figure out why, at 12:00am every day, one of my devices would spike CPU and Disk I/O and tracked it down to logrotate. It took me a bit to realize what the if [ -d /run/systemd/system ] in /etc/cron.daily/logrotate was doing and then I found the /lib/systemd/system/logrotate.timer file and was able to change it. I didn’t remember logrotate being controlled this way and it took me a few hours to work backwards through what was happening.
Are situations like this what influence wanting to be systemd free? Or am I off the mark? I’m genuinely curious to understand and where I should start exploring to understand!
I use antiX Linux because I can configure it to run on an old computer and also a newer computer. On the old ones I can even use a few crusty Version 4 kernels, though I am not sure I have saved any of the really old ones. The antiX environment also builds and retains as much old, archived software as possible, snagging the source code before it’s gone.
Besides that I can help with the forum community and help people from modest surroundings that either can’t afford modern systems or they’re like me, seeking to help people.
The third group are those who cringe at anything from the USA and they also detest systemd. I was using antiX for several years before all of the systemd stuff began, so it doesn’t matter to me but it’s good
80% of my production systems are older AntiX(just now comes Trixie Beta v25) and Devuan(delivered Trixie - Excalibur). Really high performance and confident systems were are tunned(config, liquorix kernels,…). Debian would be nice, but better without Lord of the Rings(systemd). Best for community
