After the reboot (half way through the instructions), those with a Wifi
network card won't be able to continue (install xfce4, and so on...)
because they won't be in x-windows anymore, and the network-manager app
needs x-windows to work, ergo, no internet connection :(

On 2015-11-03 20:51, dev1fanboy wrote:
> Quick start guide to uprading to Devuan and configuring minimalism.
>
> There are a lot of people talking about minimalism in Devuan and some
> may be wondering if they can upgrade to Devuan. The answer is yes, you
> can upgrade to Devuan right now and expect it to work with few if any
> problems in the stable branch - which is not yet announced stable but
> is clearly a lot better than alpha quality as you might have heard
> mentioned on devuan.org. I am currently putting in a little research
> before writing a more full guide to upgrading, installing and getting
> more minimalism out of Devuan. Hopefully I will be starting a wiki for
> all this info and more to go into in the near future, but for now I
> want to just put it out there for people trying to upgrade their
> current system or get more minimalism in their system.
>
> Let's get started.
>
>
> 1) Upgrading Debian to Devuan Stable (aka Jessie 1.0)
>
> You can upgrade to Devuan Jessie 1.0 from either Debian Wheezy or from
> Debian Jessie. For other branches you are on your own for now, and I
> suggest avoiding upgrades to Devuan testing (ascii) for now until after
> the official stable release.
>
> First simply open a terminal and type:
>
> user@debian:~$ sudo -s
>
> Enter your user password.
>
> Or if sudo is not available:
>
> user@debian:~$ su
>
> Enter your root password.
>
> Now we can continue with the upgrade. You need to edit the sources.list
> configuration file so that apt will be getting packages only from the
> devuan mirror (there is just one for now):
>
> root@debian:~# nano /etc/apt/sources.list
>
> Comment out ALL current lines in your sources.list and add the Devuan
> mirror with the Jessie (stable) branch. This is roughly how it should
> look:
>
> #deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian wheezy main
> deb http://packages.devuan.org/merged jessie main
>
> Now we need to get the devuan keyring from the repoistory so we can
> authenticate packages:
>
> root@debian:~# apt-get update
> root@debian:~# apt-get install devuan-keyring
>
> Many people coming over to Devuan will be hoping to escape the web of
> systemd in the process - if this is your choice you need to specify
> your init system now before you proceed. I will be using sysvinit in
> this example as it is what I have tested - systemd init will be removed
> if present:
>
> root@debian:~# apt-get install sysvinit-core
>
> The base-files package will be installed automatically in the case of
> an upgrade from Debian Wheezy, but it has been reported that this
> package will need to be selected manually when upgrading from Jessie.
> Either way we can do this now:
>
> root@debian:~# apt-get install base-files
>
> Start the system upgrade with:
>
> root@debian:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
>
> Depending on your connection speed it could take a while, grab yourself
> a drink.
>
> Once finished you will be using Devuan GNU/Linux 1.
>
> Do some optional cleaning up:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get autoremove --purge
> root@devuan:~# apt-get autoclean
>
> The first command will remove any 'orphaned' dependencies from your
> previous install including unwanted configurations for those packages.
> I highly recommend this because it's good security practice. The second
> command clears up all cached packages except for those that are
> installed on the running system, reclaiming a little disk space.
>
> Now you should simply reboot so that you are using the kernel shipped
> with Devuan:
>
> root@devuan:~# reboot
>
> If in the upgrade process gnome was removed do not panic, the reason
> for this is it depends on systemd and you have opted for sysvinit. The
> default desktop environment in Devuan is XFCE:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get install xfce4
>
> Check that you can start your desktop environment:
>
> root@devuan:~# su - username
> user@devuan:~$ startxfce4
>
> If it all works you can add a display manager safely for when you next
> reboot:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get install slim
>
>
> 2) Configure minimalism in the system
>
> Thanks to a tip given to me by a fellow minimalist from #debianfork
> (unnamed for now until I talk to them) you will be able to debloat your
> system in a very neat way. This is completely optional and may be done
> either before or after the upgrade. We are going to configure apt to
> ignore all 'recommended' packages in Debian/Devuan as the majority of
> these often will not make sense to be there. There are some exceptions
> where recommends should definitely be installed and we will take care
> of this as well.
>
> First use an editor to make the necessary changes:
>
> root@devuan:~# nano /etc/apt.conf.d/01lean
>
> Add the following lines:
>
> APT::Install-Suggests "0";
> APT::Install-Recommends "0";
> APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "false";
> APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant "false";
>
> Press the Ctrl and X keys together to save and quit.
>
> Now we are going to retroactively remove all recommended packages,
> along with any suggests you may have pulled in. Adjust the above
> accordingly to your needs if you still want either suggests or
> recommends. Before proceeding we will protect the ca-certificates
> package from getting removed along with isc-dhcp-common if it is
> installed. The ca-certificates package contains ssl certificates from
> certificate authorities and naturally you will want this for any system
> where you will be using a browser (if you don't know then you need it).
> The isc-dhcp-common package takes care of automatic network
> configuration via dhcp on boot (see man 5 interfaces), if you don't
> know what this means then you need this package too.
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get install ca-certificates isc-dhcp-common
>
> This will manually select these packages and they will now not be
> removed. If you are asked to configure the ca-certificates package by a
> dialog screen you should answer to always trust new certificates
> authorities to avoid having to manually select them.
>
> Now all that needs to be done is remove the packages we have opted out
> of:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get autoremove --purge
>
> The now 'orphaned' recommends and suggests will be retroactively
> removed, cutting away some fat. Unused configuration files for those
> packages will also be removed. Check the list of packages to be removed
> before proceeding and make notes of packages you are sure you want to
> keep so you can install them later (man apt-get for details).
>
> Some optional cleaning up:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get autoclean
>
> Unwanted archives will be removed from the package cache, if any.
>
>
> 3)​ What about removing dbus?
>
> Sadly XFCE depends on dbus and so do many other packages, there will be
> several solutions to removing dbus but you may have to compromise a
> bit.
>
> A quick list of window managers that do not depend on dbus with
> suggestions from a couple of #debianfork regs:
>
> fluxbox
> blackbox
> openbox
> fvwm
> fvwm-crystal
> icewm
>
> For a graphical browser I suggest iceweasel, you might also like:
> ​
> epiphany
> links2
> dillo
>
> For example:
>
> root@devuan:~# apt-get install fluxbox bbkeys menu iceweasel
> root@devuan:~# apt-get purge dbus
>
> Check the list of packages to be purged carefully before proceeding to
> ensure you really want to do this.
>
> Login to your user account, set your WM in the xinit file and start the
> X server:
>
> root@devuan:~# su - user
> user@devuan:~$ echo "exec fluxbox" > .xinitrc
> user@devuan:~$ startx
>
> You can now login by the console each time at boot and type startx.
> Information on display managers will come later, for now you should do
> some research if you need this.
>
> In the process of removing dbus you might have noticed the gvfs package
> being removed which is used for USB automounting, this is expected as
> it depends on dbus. A simple alternative to USB auto-mounting is to put
> your user in the disk group and set the possible mount points in fstab.
> You will then be able to mount your USB disks with ease. Further
> information may appear here after a little research on the topic of
> auto-mounting and graphical file managers.
>
> root@devuan:~# adduser yourusername disk
> root@devuan:~# cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup
> root@devuan:~# nano /etc/fstab
>
> At the bottom of the fstab simply add the following:
>

 > /dev/sdb1        /media/usb0    auto    user,noauto    0 0
 > /dev/sdc1        /media/usb1    auto    user,noauto    0 0

>
> An important thing here is that 'user' mode is set as it allows your
> user to mount the disk where usually only root can do that. The
> 'noauto' option specifies the filesystem will not be mounted at boot.
> See man 5 fstab and man mount for more details.
>
> This is based on a single hard disk system. Your mount points may be
> different, if so you will need to adapt this if /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1
> are already in use in the fstab. If everything is correct hit Ctrl and
> X together to save and exit.
>
> Now create the mountpoints:
>
> root@devuan:~# mkdir /media/usb0
> root@devuan:~# mkdir /media/usb1
>
> You should now plug in your usb drive(s) and test that it works:
>
> user@devuan:~$ mount /media/usb0
> user@devuan:~$ mount /media/usb1
>
> When done unmount:
>
> user@devuan:~$ umount /media/usb0
> user@devuan:~$ umount /media/usb1
>
>
> --
>
>
> There you have it, a retro style Devuan install that wouldn't be out of
> place before systemd, dbus and other madness became the trend for
> GNU/Linux.
>
> As you might have noticed It's a very smooth upgrade to Devuan in the
> here and now, not much different if you simply upgraded your Debian
> system. With a little more work you can get a reasonably minimal system
> as well and remove dbus if you want to.
>
>
> Enjoy Devuan!
>
> ~~
>
> dev1fanboy
>