dear Init Freedom Lovers,

once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you.

As promised two years ago with the first declaration of Exodus from
Debian, today we can proudly state: we do not go gentle into that good
night.

Now has come the time to announce the Beta release of Devuan.

Debian GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd, on its way to
become much more than that. This Beta release marks an important
milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as
an universal base distribution.

Today Devuan Jessie provides continuity as a safe upgrade path from
Debian Wheezy and a flawless switch from Debian Jessie avoiding most
of the problems introduced by systemd.

This has taken more than expected, but that's because we haven't given
up on any important detail known to us. Today we can say Devuan is
here to stay as something we can rely on in the future. Developers and
supporters are already using it in production and this Beta here is to
ask the community at large to help us spot what is missing and smooth
the edges of Devuan Jessie, but also to keep donating, sponsoring and
investing in our development.

This has been a long journey, lead by world-class experts, supporters,
entusiasts and donors. We are very grateful to all of you: beyond the
code, it is this critical mass that made Devuan become what it is
today, a new start in the firmament of base GNU+Linux distributions.

# Download

With this release we are experiencing heavy load, proof of the
enormous interest around this distribution. Please use this torrent:
https://beta.devuan.org/devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta.torrent

All installers released are on https://files.devuan.org

Mirrors can use rsync to stay up to date, please notice us at
if you setup one from `files.devuan.org::devuan`

SHA256 sums of files for download are signed with key 4ACB7D10
available on pgp.mit.edu and keybase.io/jaromil

Here a list of the released installers and images:

 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_DVD.iso    4.36 GB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_CD.iso    644 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_NETINST.iso    212 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_CD.iso    647 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_NETINST.iso    252 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_cloud.qcow2    693.95 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_opennebula.qcow2    685.3 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_vagrant.box    651.94 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_bananapi.img.xz    185.06 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_bananapro.img.xz    185.06 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_beagleboneblack.img.xz    274.95 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_chromeacer.img.xz    265.65 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_cubieboard2.img.xz    249.02 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_cubietruck.img.xz    249.74 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_odroidxu.img.xz    200.97 MB
 - devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_raspi2.img.xz    194.17 MB

# Press

A press kit is available on https://devuan.org/os/press

Journalist inquiries are welcome and we may be able to accomodate
different language needs, yet the main one is english.

Contact us on IRC or by email (see
https://devuan.org/os/contact).

# Support

Please support devuan with a donation: https://devuan.org/os/donate

During 2014 and 2015 we have received up to 10.000 $ in donations and
we are very grateful for everyone who believed in us, you know who you
are <3. This money has been used to pave the road towards the beta
release we have today.

But this is not enough to continue at a good pace and we are
determined to not let Devuan be just an hobbie. We want to build
Devuan as a sustainable project that can motivate and support highly
skilled developers to work on it. We kindly ask everyone out there to
keep supporting us financially with donations and sponsorships.

A shop is up with some merchanding https://shop.spreadshirt.net/devuan

For a sponsorship agreement please do not hesitate to contact us at
the private email address: onelove \at\ devuan.org.

# Team

As of today, many of us are proud to be public, not just on the basis
of a declaration, but on the actual work that has been done, with a
lot of passion, yet mostly in our spare time. The Devuan's developer
team is listed publicly on https://devuan.org/os/team.

We'd like to give a warm welcome also to our board of trustees, whose
ethical conduct and technical concerns have nurtured this project from
its very inception and will guide it it in the future.

The Devuan board of trustees:

- Yvette Agostini (VUA) :: founder of the Veteran Unix Admins group
- Roger Leigh (Debian) :: maintainer of sysvinit package in Debian
- Gabriele “Asbesto” Zaverio (MusIF) :: director, computer museum
- Emiliano Russo (MIAI) :: director, computer museum
- Stefania Calcagno (ESOCOP) :: president, European Society for Computer Preservation


# Thanks for all your appreciation and happy hacking!