Dear Init Freedom Lovers,

Once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you!

After some important fixes and updates, we continue down our path of
providing Debian without systemd by announcing the release of Devuan
Jessie Beta2.

This interim Beta2 release is another milestone as Devuan continues
towards its goal of sustainability as a universal base distribution.
Beta2 will be soon followed by a release candidate and the final
Jessie release, due beginning of 2017.

# Where we are, how we got here and where we are going

A presentation was given at the Free Society Conference and Nordic
Summit (FSCONS) earlier in November 2016 and is visible here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo

This video gives an extensive overview on all the work done so far on
Devuan. The slides shown are available here:
https://devuan.org/os/download/devuan_fscons2016.pdf

A list of live links to the derivatives mentioned in that presentation
are listed here:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=9

# Downloads

Official Devuan images: https://files.devuan.org

Live iso from Refracta: https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/
(coming soon)

Minimal live iso with accessibility support: http://kalos.mine.nu

# Upgrade

As with the Beta, this release provides a safe upgrade path from
Debian Wheezy and a flawless upgrade from Debian Jessie while nearly
eliminating the necessity for anything systemd.

The Devuan Apt package repositories are:
```
deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie          main
deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-updates  main
deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-security main
```
We provide access to our package repository also via Tor:
```
deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged jessie          main
deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged jessie-updates  main
deb tor+http://devuanfwojg73k6r.onion/merged jessie-security main
```

# Growing support

Since the Beta release, even more developers, supporters and now many
users have Devuan in production environments and on their personal
computers. This larger user-base has helped smooth the edges of the
Beta thanks to an active community.

As our journey lead by world-class experts, supporters, enthusiasts
and donors continues, we acknowledge with heartfelt thanks and
appreciation everyone of you. We are very grateful for every
donation, helping this project to survive and grow
https://devuan.org/donate

# Community

Mailinglist:
https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng

Community Docs: https://talk.devuan.org

Community Forum: https://dev1galaxy.org

IRC channel: #devuan on freenode.net

happy hacking ;^)