No woke and no systemd, sounds interesting.
(Not that I'll ever stop procrastinating and move away from Ubuntu...)
Tried it a few years back. The installer was shit and did NOT want to cooperate. In addition, if you game on Linux at all, the lack of systemd will mess with your system
I've been running it on my gaming PC for over a year now, and as VMs for four. The only problems I've run into are the lack of sysvinit scripts for newer packages, but it's fairly simple to go back through package history to find archived versions.
It is based on Debian so it's less hand-holding than Ubuntu, but all the basic commands are the same and most packages are available.
Which newer packages did it have issues with, out of curiosity?
Have you not had any issues with game compatibility or performance?
It's been a while since I've had that issue, but Hashicorp retired their Sysvinit scripts (Vault was definitely one), Saltstack removed theirs around 3002 (but since I had older installs I just copied the script across and updated the paths), and I think Docker needed a patch to get theirs working.
I haven't played many new games as it's mostly slop to me (Factorio has a native Linux client and it's my most-played game), but the biggest compatibility issue you'll run into is Easy AntiCheat not being compiled with Linux support, which is either lazy devs or an active choice, since that would break compatibility on the Steam Deck as well, which is fast becoming the biggest audience.
Yeah there are games that just won't work, but https://protondb.com is a great crowdsourced reference for compatibility, and often they provide useful hints on how to get things working. Usually it's choosing a specific Proton runtime in Steam and occasionally a few launch options, but it's only needed once.
Performance-wise I'm running an older card so the latest drivers don't support it, and the repos only had older drivers, so I compiled the last supported driver locally. If you've got a card from the last 5 years the official Nvidia drivers should support it. I haven't used AMD on Linux in a while so I'm not sure on their performance, but considering their dedication to open source through OpenCL I have no doubts it would work fine.
Out of a similar curiosity, what games did you have issues with, and how new is your PC? Steam has been doing a lot of work to make sure new games run on Linux due to the Steam Deck, and once the drivers are in place it should just work outside of a few quirks (running Wine games from an NTFS partition is definitely one, and most other issues should have hints on ProtonDB to get it running properly).
It wasn't Devuan, it was MXLinux that I had issues with back in the day. They DO Install systemd, but it's just for compatibility (supposedly). It uses alternatives behind the scenes. Had numerous Proton issues, with games like Mass Effect, Fallout: New Vegas and 4, Dragon Age, and a few others. ProtonDB showed they SHOULD work, but for whatever reason, they didn't. The forums pointed to the lack of running systemd interfering with Proton. Not sure if it was the issue, but when I switched to distros that do use Systemd, like Mint, Manjaro, or straight Arch, they all worked perfectly. As a matter of fact: I almost NEVER use the Linux native build for Steam games, cause in almost every instance the Windows version will work better. I think the only games I use the native for is Stardew Valley and DOTA2.
I'm on Manjaro now. Game heavily. Everything I throw at it works, or only needs minor tweaks.
Ryzen 5800X, 32GB ram, Nvidia 2070 Super. Not SUPER modern, but good enough to run basically anything modern at at least medium settings. My wife and son have similar builds, except the video card. Wife has a 6600XT, and son has a 6800XT. Both run as well as I do.
I tried it out today, but there didn't appear to be any good way to enable video hardware acceleration with nouveau, or install nvidia proprietary drivers.
Doesn't it have access to the non-free repos in debian? It's in there, if I remember correctly. if not...yeah...tar ball city, fuck that
edit: checked, yeah, it's supposed to have non-free on tap, just need to enable. Once you do, there's a script you can use that will help with the install
https://gist.github.com/Kreyren/cccf642ce672fd8f127ed128cf27749b
(post is archived)