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I'm on transition from Mac OS-X to Devuan. Trying to make the learning curve not as steep, I need to install some non-free software. Reading through forums, I understand there is a command that will allow me to install Dropbox, skype, bluetooth audio outputs, etc. etc.on my system. I know this is highly discouraged, but I need these apps so as to let go of my Mac completeley, and then slowly do the complete migration into free software.

Rui F Ribeiro
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Guillermo
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    @GAD3R Looking at devuan, they do provide optional contrib and non-free repositories (even if it might be actually debian behind). eg: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/dists/ascii/contrib/ and http://deb.devuan.org/merged/dists/ascii/non-free/ – A.B Dec 26 '18 at 13:58

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Two remarks first:

  • it might seem strange for newcomers from Mac OS X to choose Devuan, since MacOS itself didn't keep an original SystemV init system but is using launchd so there's anyway a new init system to learn (if one chooses to learn about it), whatever it would have been. Usually people choosing Devuan over Debian are already knowledgeable in this field.
  • Devuan's site while mentionning the availability of non-free doesn't seem to document how to use it, probably expecting people choosing Devuan to already know.

So just find either in the file /etc/apt/sources.list or in a file in the directory /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ the entries about devuan with the word main and append contrib non-free to it. This should typically give something like:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free

Remember to choose a source provided by the distribution whenever possible to avoid FrankenDebian or here FrankenDevuan. It might be a bit misleading here, because I believe (not sure) that merged in devuan.org plays the role of a kind of automatic reverse proxy which can dispatch the final URL either to devuan or to debian for untouched packages.

A.B
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    Thank you! I know this seems to go against the intention of what all of you are trying to achieve. I just need a couple of stepping stone that I will soon remove. I have given myself the task to learn this system so as to show others. – Guillermo Dec 30 '18 at 20:24