Devuan Project Announces Beta Release

Today the Devuan Project announced availability of a public beta release to their target group which they call Init Freedom Lovers. One may recall the reason for the split and intended fork from Debian was the decision by the Debian Project to hence include systemd as the default init system, starting with the release of Debian 8 'Jessie' and beyond, with no easy way of switching this out for another init to be used at boot without recompiling binaries or not using certain other programs dependent on it.

As promised two years ago with the first declaration of Exodus from Debian, today we can proudly state: we do not go gentle into that goodnight.
Now has come the time to announce the Beta release of Devuan.
Debian GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd, on its way to become much more than that. This Beta release marks an important milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as a universal base distribution.
Today Devuan Jessie provides continuity as a safe upgrade path from Debian Wheezy and a flawless switch from Debian Jessie avoiding most of the problems introduced by systemd.
This has taken more than expected, but that's because we haven't given up on any important detail known to us. Today we can say Devuan is here to stay as something we can rely on in the future. Developers and supporters are already using it in production and this Beta here is to ask the community at large to help us spot what is missing and smooth the edges of Devuan Jessie, but also to keep donating, sponsoring and investing in our development.
This has been a long journey, lead by world-class experts, supporters, entusiasts and donors. We are very grateful to all of you: beyond the code, it is this critical mass that made Devuan become what it is today, a new start in the firmament of base GNU+Linux distributions.

# Download
With this release we are experiencing heavy load, proof of theenormous interest around this distribution. Please use this torrent: https://beta.devuan.org/devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta.torrent
All installers released are on https://files.devuan.org
Mirrors can use rsync to stay up to date, please notice us at if you setup one from `files.devuan.org::devuan`
SHA256 sums of files for download are signed with key 4ACB7D10 available on pgp.mit.edu and keybase.io/jaromil

Here a list of the released installers and images:
- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_DVD.iso 4.36 GB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_CD.iso 644 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_NETINST.iso 212 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_CD.iso 647 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_i386_NETINST.iso 252 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_cloud.qcow2 693.95 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_opennebula.qcow2 685.3 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_amd64_vagrant.box 651.94 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_bananapi.img.xz 185.06 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_bananapro.img.xz 185.06 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_beagleboneblack.img.xz 274.95 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_chromeacer.img.xz 265.65 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_cubieboard2.img.xz 249.02 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_cubietruck.img.xz 249.74 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_odroidxu.img.xz 200.97 MB- devuan_jessie_1.0.0-beta_armhf_raspi2.img.xz 194.17 MB

# Press
A press kit is available on https://devuan.org/os/press
Journalist inquiries are welcome and we may be able to accomodate different language needs, yet the main one is english.
Contact us on IRC or by email (see https://devuan.org/os/contact).

# Support
Please support devuan with a donation: https://devuan.org/os/donate
During 2014 and 2015 we have received up to 10.000 $ in donations and we are very grateful for everyone who believed in us, you know who you are <3. This money has been used to pave the road towards the beta release we have today.
But this is not enough to continue at a good pace and we are determined to not let Devuan be just an hobbie. We want to build Devuan as a sustainable project that can motivate and support highly skilled developers to work on it. We kindly ask everyone out there to keep supporting us financially with donations and sponsorships.
A shop is up with some merchanding https://shop.spreadshirt.net/devuan
For a sponsorship agreement please do not hesitate to contact us at the private email address: onelove \at\ devuan.org.

# Team
As of today, many of us are proud to be public, not just on the basis of a declaration, but on the actual work that has been done, with a lot of passion, yet mostly in our spare time. The Devuan's developer team is listed publicly on https://devuan.org/os/team.
We'd like to give a warm welcome also to our board of trustees, whose ethical conduct and technical concerns have nurtured this project from its very inception and will guide it it in the future.
The Devuan board of trustees:
- Yvette Agostini (VUA) :: founder of the Veteran Unix Admins group- Roger Leigh (Debian) :: maintainer of sysvinit package in Debian- Gabriele “Asbesto” Zaverio (MusIF) :: director, computer museum- Emiliano Russo (MIAI) :: director, computer museum- Stefania Calcagno (ESOCOP) :: president, European Society for Computer Preservation

# Thanks for all your appreciation and happy hacking!

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