* On 2016 29 Apr 16:53 -0500, Haines Brown wrote:
> Let me see if I understand you correctly. the package firmware-iwlwifi
> is not open software, and so is not available from the devuan package
> archive. So
> 
>   a) The sources.list line
>   deb http://packages.devuan.org/merged jessie main non-free contrib
>   should not have non-free appended because devuan does not support
>   non-free packages.
I just posted a message to another thread where I have my sources.list
set as:
deb 
http://packages.devuan.org/merged jessie main contrib non-free
and firmware-iwlwifi is not shown to be in the obsolete and locally
installed packages section in Aptitude CUI which tells me that it is in
the list of available packages.
>   b) The only way to get firmware-iwlwifi, an essential package I cannot
>   do without, is to get it as I did from the Debian mirror, but I'm
>   "on my own" because Devuan does not support it.
As I understand it, the 'merged' package repository gets those packages
directly from Debian that do not need to be rebuilt for Devuan.
>   c) The same for task-mail-server, which apparently has some non-free
>   drivers. Is this why it is absent? I had to install the obvious
>   applications such as exim4, procmail, mutt, spamassassin,
>   individually.
Try it with the non-free section added and see.
- Nate
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