Devuan Daedalus 5.0 Released Based on Debian 12

Rohan Timalsina

August 31, 2023 - TuxCare expert team

Devuan GNU+Linux 5.0 “Daedalus” is now available as the latest stable version based on Debian 12 with Linux kernel 6.1. Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian GNU/Linux distribution without systemd and its dependencies. Instead of systemd, Devuan uses the sysvinit, openrc, or runit init system.

Let’s look at other changes introduced in this stable release.

What’s new in Daedalus 5.0?

Libseat1 library

The use of the libseat1 library for rootless startx and access to input and visual devices eliminates the DBus dependency from xserver-xorg-core.

Wayland GUI

This release includes a complete Wayland desktop environment without elogind.

The developers also point out that the LIBSEAT_BACKEND environment variable can be used to explicitly select either the seatd or elogind backend for libseat1 to use. Users of seatd are urged to check if their user belongs to the ‘video’ group.

How to Install Devuan Daedalus 5.0?

For a fresh installation, Devuan GNU+Linux 5.0 “Daedalus” can be downloaded from the official website as installation, live, netboot, and Docker images.
Users currently running Devuan GNU+Linux 4 “Chimaera” can follow the instructions to upgrade their installations to the latest stable Daedalus 5.0 version.
Existing Debian Bookworm users can choose to migrate their installation to Devuan Daedalus.

For the detailed installation guide, refer to the official documentation.

Non-free Firmware Packages in Devuan

Even though Devuan does not use systemd init by default, it enables users to install non-free firmware packages during installation if required for their hardware, allowing for full compatibility. Users can select “Expert install” from the installation menu to prevent the automatic installation and loading of non-free firmware packages.

The non-free firmware packages are pre-installed on the desktop-live and minimal-live images. However, the remove_firmware.sh script, located under /root, can be used to delete these packages after boot.

The sources for this article include a story from 9to5Linux.

Summary