systemd-free Devuan Linux hits RC2

GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon are now off the menu

Devuan Linux has released its second release candidate.

Devuan was created by self-described “Veteran Unix admins” who find Debian's adoption of systemd abhorrent, because they want complete control over the packages that load when Linux boots. “Devuan decided to fork not only the base distribution, but also its governance,” the group writes, “because Debian has made it difficult to avoid systemd as init, entangling the system with unnecessary dependencies.”

A 1.0.0 release candidate emerged just under a fortnight ago and today the developers announced Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 RC2.

New in this cut of the code is a systemd-free version of network-manager, new versions of reportbug, desktop-base and xfce4-panel.

GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon have been removed from tasksel, but can still be installed although they “are known to suffer from some glitches due to the lack of systemd.”

The distro's developers say it now supports 29 different ARM boards, including the Raspberry Pi zero through three

The email announcing the new release hints at more to come, telling readers that “this release candidate is one step closer to our final Devuan stable release and our first long term support release as well.” There's no timetable for any future releases, but this one emerged in 13 days so there's every chance the action could heat up as testers make progress.

The new distro can be had here. ®