Provides a libre Debian fork without the systemd

Apr 24, 2017 21:08 GMT  ·  By

It's been almost five months since the developers behind the Debian-based Devuan GNU/Linux operating system launched the second Beta version towards the first stable release of the OS, and they now announced the Release Candidate.

The Devuan project continues its vision of providing a libre Debian fork without using the systemd init system, and the Release Candidate (RC) version brings the GNU/Linux distribution closer to a final release. The interesting fact is that this RC appears to be stable enough to be used for production work.

"Our April 2017 gift to you is the long-awaited release of Devuan Jessie stable release candidate (1.0.0-RC). If all goes as planned, this will be our first Devuan stable release and our first long-term support (LTS) release as well," reads the mailing list announcement.

Here's what's new in Devuan GNU/Linux 1.0.0 Release Candidate

The Release Candidate couldn't ship without some much-needed improvements, and among the ones mentioned in the release notes are a better automatic detection of wireless networks, support for installing Samba, as well as multiple base flavors, including desktop-live, embedded, minimal-live, and installer-iso.

Devuan's Simple Distro Kit (SDK) also received some improvements, the Refracta scripts have been added, and ARM support was improved, allowing users to install the OS on SBCs like Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3, Acer Chromebook, Cubieboard2, Cubietruck, A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2, Nokia N900, and Odroid-XU.

As usual, you'll find the latest ISO images of Devuan GNU/Linux 1.0.0 "Jessie" Release Candidate on the official website if you want to download and install them on your personal computer. However, please try to keep in mind that some bugs might still be present in this release, despite the fact the devs say it's a "stable" build.