Devuan is an open source, Debian-based Linux distribution that aims to maintain compatibility with other init systems and avoid lock-in by systemd.

[3][4][5][6] With the release of Debian 8, some developers and users felt alienated due to the project's adoption of systemd and subsequent removal of support for other existing init systems.

ASCII provides a choice of five different desktop environments at install time (XFCE, Cinnamon, KDE, LXQt, MATE), while many other window managers are available from the repositories.

It also provides installation options for choosing between sysvinit and OpenRC for init, and between GRUB and LILO for the boot loader.

Devuan has its own package repository which mirrors upstream Debian,[16] with local modifications made only when needed to allow for init systems other than systemd.

[20] Star is another Devuan-based Linux distribution featuring several lightweight window managers, such as Openbox, Fluxbox, JWM, and i3.