Devuan Release Information
Devuan release codenames
Stable releases
Devuan release | Suite | Released | Planet nr. | Debian release | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chimaera | stable | 2021-10-14 | 623 | Bullseye | Maintained |
Beowulf | oldstable | 2020-06-01 | 38086 | Buster | Maintained |
ASCII | oldoldstable | 2018-06-08 | 3568 | Stretch | Maintained |
Jessie | oldoldoldstable | 2017-05-25 | 10464 | Jessie | Archived |
In development
Devuan release | Suite | Released | Planet nr. | Debian release | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Daedalus | in development | Not released | 1864 | Bookworm | Maintained |
Ceres | unstable | Not released | 1 | Sid | Maintained |
Devuan release codenames are chosen from the Minor Planet Center Names List. The first Devuan stable
release, Jessie, mirrors Debian’s Jessie (a Toy Story character). Future release names follow in alphabetical order starting with the letter A, then B etc. ASCII, Beowulf, Chimaera, Daedalus, and Excalibur have already been chosen.
An exception to this pattern is unstable
, which always has the codename ceres - minor planet number 1 - which is an alias for Debian’s sid.
Devuan suites
Devuan development takes place in suites that indicate a level of stability:
stable
is the current officially released suite of Devuan. It is the suite recommended for use in production.testing
is where the nextstable
suite is developed. Software is usually more up-to-date but there may still be issues.testing
becomesstable
“when it is ready”.unstable
is where developers refine and stabilize the latest package versions.
When the current testing
moves to stable
, the previous stable
transitions to oldstable
and a snapshot of unstable
becomes the new testing
.
Codenames or suites?
The release codenames or suite designations in /etc/apt/sources.list
indicate which release will be used when updating and upgrading packages. Note that the suite names stable
and testing
will refer to different releases over time.
As of this writing, stable
refers to Devuan Chimaera (Debian Bullseye) and testing
refers to Devuan Daedalus (Debian Bookworm). Once Daedalus is officially released, stable
will refer to Daedalus and testing
will refer to the next release in development, Bookworm (Debian Bookworm).
However, if your Chimaera sources.list
refers to the release codename chimaera
you will remain on Chimaera until you change your sources.list
. That means that you will have more control over when the upgrade happens. And if you are using daedalus
in your sources.list
you will move seamlessly to the new stable version of Daedalus when it is released.
To avoid the possibility of mixing two potentially incompatible repositories, Devuan recommends using release codenames in sources.list
.
Archive
At its End of Life (EOL), a release will be considered archived and awarded a status of the same name. This essentially means:
- it is frozen
- no development will occur on it
- it won't receive updates, including security ones
- its assets will be distributed from a specific archive endpoint