Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

> Both Armbian and Devuan have their own toolchains for ARM boards and both have fatal flaws: the former is locked to systemd-based distros, the latter has poor support for ARM boards.

Isn't it possible to improve Devuan's toolchain so that it better supports ARM boards?

And, for that matter - isn't it possible to do the same for Debian itself, so that the delta to Devuan would inherit decent support for ARM boards?

I'm not a toolchain expert, so an answer with links to explanation of relevant concepts/jaron would be appreciated.

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Regardless - I'm always happy to hear news about widening adoption and influence of Devuan. I believe a non-systemd distribution is the way to go and am glad Devuan offers that for the Debian space (while Debian, unfortunately, forces systemd on you and it's not just an option).

Re: Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

#6

Post by resolutebat » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 7:24 AM UTC

Expanding out the stack here, Armvuan = Armbian + Devuan = ARM + Debian + Debian - systemd, so Armvuan = systemd-less Debian for ARM?

Re: Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

#7

Post by axy » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 7:57 AM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #5

> Both Armbian and Devuan have their own toolchains for ARM boards and both have fatal flaws: the former is locked to systemd-based distros, the latter has poor support for ARM boards. Isn't it possible to improve Devuan's toolchain so that it better supports ARM boards? And, for that matter - isn't it possible to do the same for Debian itself, so that the delta to Devuan would inherit decent support for ARM boards?…

Everything is possible, the question is who will do that. I'm not an expert in anything either. Both toolchains make me depressed. But I'm glad I can run Devuan on my boards at last. Many thanks to both projects.

Re: Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

#8

Post by qwerty456127 » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 7:58 AM UTC

> It is built in the simplest way, using Devuan debootstrapped system with kernel, dtb, u-boot, and board support packages from Armbian

By the way, reading this, an idea just hit me. It persistantly seems evident distro maintains often struggle to maintain huge repositories in both well-tested and up-to-date state. Why don't we separate OS distribution and apps repos into separate independent projects? Perhaps it could be enough for distro authors to concentrate on maintaining the actuall OS (system packages). Probably also a humble number of essential apps. Everything else could be then maintained in form of PPAs by whoever is interested.

Even existence of distro "flavours" focusing on specific DEs always felt a quirk to me. An operation of installing and choosing a specific DE should never have been requiring any attention from the distro author. The fact it does suggesrs there are quirks which have to be addressed, these should better be polished away globally than worked around in every installation script.

Re: Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

#9

Post by Schiphol » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 8:09 AM UTC

Choosing the opposite syllables for the portmanteau would have given Debian, which has a nicer ring to it.

Re: Armbian and Devuan = Armvuan

#10

Post by johnny22 » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 8:16 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #8

> It is built in the simplest way, using Devuan debootstrapped system with kernel, dtb, u-boot, and board support packages from Armbian By the way, reading this, an idea just hit me. It persistantly seems evident distro maintains often struggle to maintain huge repositories in both well-tested and up-to-date state. Why don't we separate OS distribution and apps repos into separate independent projects? Perhaps it cou…

that's the way the "immutable" distros are going. they provide a base system and then a ton of packages come from containers or flatpaks. Like things based on OpenSuSE's MicroOS or Fedora's Silverblue and Kinoite but it does require the flavors currently, since the DE are considered core packages.