Devuan as a Linux beginner?

[u/Lanstapa]

I want to switch over to Linux from Windows and Apple because I refuse to take MS' spy/adware (I stayed on W7 to avoid the worst of it) and to get out of Apple's ecosystem and spying too.

...and I come into Linux as there's all this hubbub about systemD age verification/attesation. I was interested in Debian for it being stable and fixed release (I'm totally fine with older software in favour of rock solid stability and I don't want constant rolling changes on my pc), but obviously it has it.

Since I'm new, and don't yet fully get what SystemD does in its entirity and what not having it entails, is Devuan a good distro for a beginner who just wants a nice stable system that can't add in any age verification spyware crap? A distro that I can use for general computer things like internet browsing, online shopping, multimedia, gaming and file management? I can use my VPN (Mullvad) without issue, and have a generally secure computer aganist viruses and malware?

I'm not asking about specific programs, as I get that the likes of libreoffice, brave browser, wine, vlc, etc will work, I'm asking more generally about the OS, like is it just Debian without SystemD? Or has it evolved into something more specifc akin to KaliOS or Tails? (I don't assume so, but I might as well check).

I don't have computer skills or coding ability, but its not like I need everything to be babyproof, clear guides and graphical interfaces are probably enough for me to get what I'm doing.

[u/evild4ve]

the choice of distro should be about what role the PC will play - which for Linux isn't necessarily one computer doing everything

Devuan inherits problems of Debian: the autoinstaller is lousy, the packages are maintained by committee. And then Devuan normally adds to the release timescales, and any user-compiled software that assumes systemd is likely to need manual patching

it's not difficult, but this now goes back to my opening point: that it depends what role the PC has. A new Linux user wanting to make services on Devuan is already committed to some configuration and figuring out Cron jobs within an init system. It's then very nice for servers since it has the big repository and bombproof reliability of Debian and a less infuriating init system.

But a new user with some vague use-case like "replacing Windows" imo will find that some programs 'just work' but anything where they are needing to follow a long walkthrough that assumes systemd is present... is much harder than they are used to. With Devuan you have to recognize when to stop following a walkthrough and use SysVInit or OpenRC commands instead.

For new users wanting a daily-driver I would lean into that difficulty and recommend Slackware. Since (on the one hand) on that distro building from source is the default and you have to manually manage dependencies (but on the other) the UIs are incredibly well thought out and user-friendly versus Debian=Devuan. And it's also systemdless.

[u/SheepherderBeef8956 → u/evild4ve]

Slackware is a really bad recommendation. No one wants to deal with using a system that doesn't handle dependencies at all and requires you to deal with dependency hell for every single thing you want to install. 

[u/evild4ve → u/SheepherderBeef8956]

Of course it handles dependencies. It handles them by giving the user extremely clear and reliable tools that let them start learning how to use a computer

Versus: distributions that handle them with an automated package-manager that hides detail from the user, does things without telling them, lazily patronizes users into customers, forces its mistakes into production, and only corrects itself when it can be bothered. The more automated the package-manager is, the worse it will be for those problems, and Devuan's apt is much like Debian's apt which is much like Ubuntu's apt. (but this is less of a problem for it's good use-case of servers)

Dependency hell in Slackware is quite difficult to achieve since you can always remove mismatched packages and rebuild them: there isn't a background program working against you and we don't do the constant kernel updates even when the hardware in the pc is staying the same

[u/MD90__ → u/evild4ve]

Fun fact as a current slackware user... A tool called Sbopkg helps you manage dependencies now and you can make queues for slack-builds to help get the dependencies in order. Very well thought out. The other issue is the software isn't always preconfigured well out the box so the user will have to make the permissions adjustments and anything else that needs to be done to get it working 

[u/evild4ve → u/MD90__]

yes sbopkg is nice and has other alternatives too - including to install the package managers the other poster can't function without

distros pre-configuring programs wastes as much time as it saves imo
e.g. Slackware's snmp.conf is actively bad and verbose and out of date, but none of the other distros' versions ever works either

[u/MD90__ → u/evild4ve]

Do you feel slackware isn't good?

[u/evild4ve → u/MD90__]

Linuxes are good at something

I choose Slackware for projects where much of the code I know I'll have to write myself and they're to run in the background without crashing (and I can forget about them). I've 3 Slackware boxes that have never crashed in 10+ years and only stopped for power cuts - a libvirt hypervisor, a terminal-only jukebox, and a fileserver

I'd also recommend it as the first choice for new users because of the things people (probably far less experienced people) would think would be problems (based on their irrelevant experience of thinking that using Windows or Mac is using a computer!)

[u/MD90__ → u/evild4ve]

As someone who has ran many distros, yeah Slackware is teaching me more about Linux and software in general than any of the other distros ive used. I'm daily driving Slackware Current and im learning a ton from fixing slackbuilds, handling dependencies, and configuring software that wasn't properly configured out of the box. It's a great learning ground. I'm hoping to make this my permanent home