----- Original Message -----
> From: "Didier Kryn" <kryn@???>

>      Considering Devuan is a major lifeboat of free Linux-based OS, I'm
> anxious about its destiny and therefore trying to figure out who is
> onboard, I mean the audience.

For me, the line between desktop and server is very blurred. I use Debian
in a home environment for myself and family members. I am responsible for
the maintenance of 11 Debian machines.

LXDE is the desktop of choice for most, since Gnome 3 was introduced on
Wheezy and the long-term existence of Gnome Classic (or Gnome Fallback) is
questionable. Myself, I use Fluxbox. Some of my machines are CLI only.

Security is a top priority. I also appreciate the large number of
packages that Debian provides. I followed the systemd debates carefully
on debian-user and debian-devel. I now am of the opinion that a large
number of Debian developers are not paranoid enough to be my OS provider.

High-value software to me, in no particular order, includes:

Libreoffice
Firefox
LXDE [2]
Fluxbox
Openbox
Ardour
Jack
easytag
flac
pcmanfm
xterm
xcalc
VLC
mplayer
MythTV (from deb-multimedia.org)
Handbrake (from deb-multimedia.org)
ssh
nfs
ldap
iptables
music player [1]

1: I like Rhythmbox, but the interface is getting worse and the
transcode feature seems finicky. I have been mostly using Guayadeque
recently. I have need for both a basic player, and for something to
transcode flac files to ogg vorbis or mp3 when music is copied to a
portable player or usb stick. On Jessie without systemd, it can no
longer detect removable media, so its days on my system may be numbered.
See my so-far unanswered bug report:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=774871

2: Personally, I don't care if Devuan includes Gnome or not. I think
Gnome is so committed to 1) not being optimized for desktops and 2)
using systemd, that it would be fair to simply write it off as unusable
in Devuan. As long as I have alternatives, I am fine with that. Their
vision for their product does not impress me. I think the only reason
they have survived the past several years is because they have been
the default on so many distros for so long. But today I think there
are better choices for default desktop. LXDE and XFCE seem good. But
I honestly think most people would be well-served with something basic
like Fluxbox or Openbox with a customized startup script which runs
wicd, and maybe adding something like fbpanel.