UsrMerge Status: Testing/Excalibur and more

Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers,

This announcement looks to Devuan's future and also to its beginnings in 2015.

Debian is proceeding with a full implementation of the merged usr file structure during this current testing cycle. In order to focus Devuan's available resources on our primary purpose regarding systemd, Devuan developers have decided it is in the project's best interest to implement the usrmerge.

Navigating the merged usr transition

1. Daedalus/stable is the final Devuan release that will function without merged usr.
2. The safest way to migrate from Daedalus/stable to Excalibur/testing is to first ensure there is sufficient disk space to accommodate the merge, and that you have made backups before proceeding.
3. Only then install the usrmerge package before proceeding with the normal dist-upgrade steps.
4. This document will be updated to reflect future changes as needed.

Happy Birthday Devuan!

This announcement also celebrates Devuan's 9th birthday as the first pre-alpha ISO was gifted to us on Valentine's Day 2015. The iconic boot screen shared below was created for the event. Devuan's journey has been and continues to be a labor of Love for all of us. Love of Linux. Love of freedom. And Love of everyone on Starship Devuan.

Note that the timing was also a prophetic salute to Leonard Nimoy who died less than two weeks after the release.

May Devuan live long and prosper!

The Devuan Dev Team