On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 04:21:45PM +0200, Antony Stone wrote:
>
> > I have just installed an excalibur on a new laptop, and I must say that
> > it was not user friendly. There was no obvious help or release note to
> > check. I really could not recommend duvuan to a newbie.
>
> I would not recommend an unreleased / testing version of any distribution to a
> newbie.

Well, yes, but even if it had documentation for stable it would have
helped. I think upstream debian provides a guide and maybe the whole
debian installer manual by default, but it is a long time since I last
installed debian. Of course, there is no devuan installation manual (as
far as I know), but most of the debian installer is still relevant for
devuan.

I had to use excalibur because I was installing on bleeding edge
hardware. Mind you, I usually run testing with no significant problems.

When I installed daedalus a while ago, I think I found the same issue.
As I was converting from debian I had all the debian documentation
already on the same machine.

> a) as good as I've experienced for any Linux distribution, and

My slightly distant memory of installing debian was that there was
pretty good help at each step.

I am in a Windoze-free zone :-)

> I'd be interested to know whether your disappointing experience of installing
> Devuan Excalibur would have been noticeably different if you had started from
> Debian Trixie or whatever comes after Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin (I'm not even
> sure whether Ubuntu *has* testing versions...?)

I have never used any sort of Ubuntu, although I have solved problems
for friends who run it.

> What I mean by that last paragraph is "are you making a fair criticism of
> Devuan specifically, or are you complaining about things from upstream Debian
> which the Devuan project doesn't generally attempt to "fix", given that there's
> enough work involved in avoiding systemd?".

I was trying to make constructive comments on devuan, well aware that I
had not had the time or resources to contribute myself. I have often
thought of suggesting devuan to others, but held back because they don't
have the background which I think they would need, despite having used,
for example, Ubuntu. Mostly refugees from Windoze.

ael