On Sat, 14 May 2016 00:13:28 +0200, Emninger wrote:
> Finally i succeeded in installing devuan to this odd samsung ultrabook
> (it's nice but beeing amd based it's getting crazily hot with the
> standard free video drivers) and now i have some questions:
>
> Is there a place where to ask "dumb" questions (let's say, simple user
> related). I don't want to disturb the experts in their
> discussions ... ?

Welcome aboard!

AIUI, this list is as good a place you can get to ask _any_
question about Devuan. (Cue "there are are no dumb questions.")
It's not a place for experts only. I'm certainly not an expert,
but I hope you don't mind if I comment on some of your points.

> Some considerations and suggestions regard the installer iso:
>
> 1) May be it would be good to declare in the installer windows that the
> devuan desktop is xfce based.

Sounds reasonable to mention the default desktop flavor. It
really doesn't already? (I didn't pay attention last time I
installed.)

> 2) I love it's using slim (and not lightdm) as default login manager.

However, there are problems with SLiM. Foremost, the project seems
to be abandoned. So I'd expect it to be replaced in future Devuan
releases. BTW, I've been using lightdm for years and it never really
let me down, save some cosmetic issues. YMMV, etc. pp.

> 3) May be for wireless there could be used some wpa_supplicant based
> tool (like ceni e.g.)? In any case wicd is way better and less
> intrusive than nm.

IIRC Devuan even has its own GUI wrapper for wpa_supplicant. As I
am fine with just wpa_supplicant or wpa_gui myself, I never used
that tool and unfortunately cannot locate the package for it ATM.

> 4) As for the desktop: On another machine i use Manjaro JWM Open-RC -
> and from a functional (and esthetical!) point of view it's marvellous.
> Why not as default desktop for Devuan? If you add a nice conky for
> controlling and checking the system performance and net activities and
> the confortable configuration tool it is as handy as any standard DE
> but way way lighter.
>
> Ok, not a critic at all, just my 2c as a suggestion.

Add my 0.5¢:
Ask 5 users and learn about 11+ preferred desktop environments. :)
On a more serious note, there have been lots of suggestions and
discussions around the default DE, and I honestly think that Xfce
makes a passable tradeoff between usability and resource footprint.
Plus, it's already in the repositories. The "power users" and the
"productivity monsters" usually know where and how to get their
preferred GUI components (if any at all).

> Cheers and thanks for the good work!

+1.

> Ah, i forgot: Is there a way to get a more advanced kernel? Or would
> that break philosophy and setup?

Devuan Jessie is in sync with Debian Jessie, so you will get the
same version general purpose kernel as in Debian. You can get a
more recent version from e.g. Devuan testing, codename Ascii.
On a personal note: IMHO, as long as nothing is seriously broken,
there is no need to closely follow kernel updates (modulo security
fixes, of course). FWIW, I am running Devuan Ascii with a 3.16
kernel and an 1.17 Xorg to keep the ... um ... "fine" AMD
proprietary drivers working. (Inb4 others commenting on that last
bit: No, the free drivers don't cut it, in my case at least.)

Regards,
Urban