Hello all.

     I have been using Debian as from Potato and installed it on 
embedded devices, servers and laptops, for my job. I am looking forward 
to install Devuan Jessie when it is realeased I have some comments on 
Grub, and some more general.

Grub2:
     Currently, with Wheezy, the installation of grub2 by the Debian 
installer (with manual partitionning) fails systematically. I interpret 
it as a lack of space on the MBR since the solution I found is to leave 
some free space before the first partition.

     Grub2 is an improvement over Grub legacy, because it can handle new 
filesystems and RAID arrays. It is also a good improvement for distros 
since it takes care "upstream" of the burden of automatic configuration. 
But if you want DIY, it takes a lot of learning which I, personnaly, 
dont want to go through. Automation is obtained at the cost of making 
DIY practically impossible.

Generalities:
     Several other recent softwares have the same defect: systemd, dbus, 
and policykit, are in my list. When these softwares are in control of 
the system, this one is no longer free, but in the meaning of 
"gratuitous". Because "free" also means "libre", and when it is 
impossible to DIY, then it is not "libre". It is like about the law: 
everybody should know the law, but this implies that the law be not too 
difficult to understand.

     Here I fully agree with Clarke Sideroad, in reality, the major fork 
happened some years ago and remained unsaid up to now: Gnome and KDE 
have forked GNU-Linux to build their own gratuitous (not "free") 
competitors to MacOS. It was a fork of the spirit. Devuan, and the other 
distros still keeping away from systemd are just continuing the Unix 
spirit of GNU-Linux.

     I don't deny Gnome and KDE the right to do what they are doing, an 
OS for the general customer. I just mean it should be clear that this is 
not GNU-Linux and professionals working for these projects are 
developping non-free software, gratuitous still for some time...

     Good luck to Devuan.
                                             Didier

PS. "Devuan" is not too sexy as a name.
I like better "Dng", you know, "Dng's Not Gnome" :-)
May I suggest "Deviant" ? Sounds more ambitious :-)
Or "Bing", "Bing Is Not Gnome", King, Ming ...

Didier Kryn
Laboratoire APC
Universite Paris Diderot
http://www.apc.univ-paris7.fr/APC_CS/en