In search of a non-woke OS (that is, one that doesn’t hate me for being white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and conservative) and that also “just works” without the Big Tech intrusions like systemd and PulseAudio and which might include the cool tool set that spoiled me so much in MX-Linux, my experiment with GhostBSD was the closest I have come until yesterday, when I discovered RefractaOS. Based on Devuan and equipped with the original tools (iso maker, snapshot, etc), RefractaOS is older than Devuan (originally based on Debian before the latter went woke, adopted systemd, rage-quit X/Twitter for political reasons, etc) and originated the nifty neato tools that MX “gets credit for” because it’s more popular.

Going back to 2011 there’s this post in an old thread on antiX forums about RefractaOS, in which the lead developer praises RefractaOS for it’s speed, low resource consumption, and tool set! I wish I had known about this before, since there’s a whole ‘nother thread on MX-Forums expressing gratitude to the MX developers for MX-Snapshot. They re-wrote it, probably improved it for their distro-specific needs, and should be congratulated for doing it so successfully. “Anticapitalista” properly credits RefractaOS for the software. It shows that good ideas can be shared, adapted, and used by other distros. It’s Free and Open-Source Software being used as it was always intended – to the benefit of all. Kudos to “anticapitalista” and the MX team both for the software and for giving credit where it is due.

MEANWHILE, back in the Batcave on Robin’s old hand-me-down computer, a fresh install of GhostBSD (Xfce) was underway to cleanse the system of all the “Linux stuff” that had to be added in order to make Brave browser work. As much as I love that browser, it crashes frequently on GhostBSD. So I am back to using ungoogled-chromium (or Iridium – both are great) and adding a huge ginormous hosts file to handle ad-blocking. It’s pretty effective, but doesn’t come close to Brave’s privacy protection. Another issue has been simple tasks like getting the sound to work and a printer/scanner installed. Both are complex tasks (for me anyway) accomplished through the dreaded terminal and editing config files. GhostBSD ain’t for rookies, and not really for users like me who are easily spooked by unfamiliar technology. I don’t know that Xfce will still be supported in future releases of GhostBSD, and they are moving from the MATE desktop to something called “Gershwin” from the GNUstep project. Screenshots of that desktop look reminiscent of Windows95 or something. Eww. Seems like a step backwards, and news of it – and the switch away from Software Station planned for future releases, sent me back to resuming my search for a simple, friendly, non-woke, modern, systemd-free OS that “just works” and helps me avoid the dreadful and terrifying terminal.

A fellow MX-user who got in trouble with moderators for the same reasons I do (mentioning XLibre and/or Lunduke) told me about “non-woke” Devuan and sent some wicked cool looking screenshots. He bragged about it’s speed, simplicity, and low resource demands in spite of it’s full-fledged Xfce desktop.

Researching Devuan more deeply, I found RefractaOS and the original “MX-tools” I previously thought existed nowhere else but in antiX and MX-Linux! Except for Systemback(2), which is meant for Debian and Ubuntu-based systems.

It looks like literally everything I wanted in an OS. I’m going to install it to a spare HDD and put it through it’s paces today. STAY TUNED!