I notice your runit-services is a bit old. There's a bugfix in 0.10.1 that I highly recommend getting. You might need to get it from backports.

Curious what your final decision is/was.

Does the netinstall iso have firmware-mediatek on it?

Yes, there's firmware-mediatek_20260810-1_all.deb

However, I found in firmware/Contents-firmware:

/usr/lib/firmware/mediatek/mt7925/BT_RAM_CODE_MT7925_1_1_hdr.bin firmware-mediatek_20260622-1_all.deb non-free-firmware
/usr/lib/firmware/mediatek/mt7925/WIFI_MT7925_PATCH_MCU_1_1_hdr.bin firmware-mediatek_20260622-1_all.deb non-free-firmware
/usr/lib/firmware/mediatek/mt7925/WIFI_RAM_CODE_MT7925_1_1.bin firmware-mediatek_20260622-1_all.deb non-free-firmware

So it appears I need to update the Contents-firmware file to the correct version on the disc image.
Hopefully it will all be good in the next iso (check mirrors in a while)

It basically comes to:

• Do a full (= non-live, or maybe live+persistence) install to another disk

• Boot from it and install headers + zfs-dkms + zfs-utils + debootstrap (might as well get other utilities like arch-install-scripts, gdisk, nvme-cli, and various other filesystems on it)

• Create pool and datasets with appropriate options; personally I went for 4 datasets - root, home, media+documents, and /var/cache/apt/archives — this is not particularly distro-specific, refer to ZfsBootMenu's tutorials for Void and Debian,

• Unmount, temporary-remount, install base system with debootstrap, chroot in (arch-chroot from the above package or Void's xchroot are convenient for automatically passing /dev /sys and /proc), configure sources.list/hostname/timezone/keyboard/locales (the last 3 points are "best" done in the Debian system with dpkg-reconfigure), install network access software/aptitude/sudo/whatever-you-like and configure users + superuser access — as you can see, although this general point is somewhat laborious, it's not ZFS specific (and is somewhat explained in the above guides)

• Install kernel + headers + zfs-dkms + zfs-utils — hey, you pretty much did it before

• Download and setup ZfsBootMenu — yup, still explained by ZfsBootMenu people

• Check that it works, install desired applications, spend 30 minutes on customizations like sudo insults & saving password for 2 hours and decrapifying Firefox, enjoy — not ZFS specific either

No luck (haven't tried the above manual backport method) with a (2020 GDDR5 reissue) 710, and Nouveau likes freezing, not that I expected better from the green company on my blacklist since the 2007 BGA reliability scandals with about as much support of libre as Br*adcom...!

I just registered to this forum explicitly to thank you for this.

I'm glad to hear this.

I mail this to ralph.ronnquist same day, but no answer yet :-(
I could not find another person related to "initscripts" package.

I do seem to have some issues getting and upgrading packages, but I assume that's more of a networking issue I can figure out (I don't have ethernet, so I used my phone's internet during the installing).

Thanks for all the help, everyone!

patryk@devuan:~$ cat ~/.config/autostart/powerdevil-restart.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=PowerDevil restart
Exec=sh -c "sleep 5; /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/org_kde_powerdevil"
X-KDE-autostart-after=panel
patryk@devuan:~$ 

Thank you steve_v

Does bilibop use a lot of RAM?

How many is too many? All hard disk writes are happen in RAM. You can use noatime, nodiratime options for FS. Then all logs, /var. /tmp are in the RAM.
By default tmpfs is limited by 1/2 of RAM and you can change this value. To give you an idea, I'm using it even on very old laptop with 8 Gb RAM and no SWAP! But ... I prefer to keep only one browser with around 30 pages open and not 2 or 3 browser while watching video on this machine.

32 Gb of RAM, no swap, default tmpfs everything works perfectly: couple of browsers, video and ... virtual machine with 8 GB of virtual RAM or small local LLM.

I am using the traditional "full disk"-encryption with luks, that leaves /boot unencrypted.

+1

Best balance simplicity/security.

Borrowing from Kappa above here is what fixed it for me, and essentially only going to pulse audio.  basiclly purged everythign and reinstalled pulseaudio.  On reboot set the mixer, saved - next reboot it worked.

#purged everything
sudo apt-get purge wireplumber pipewire-alsa pipewire-audio pipewire pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pipewire pipewire-bin pipewire-pulse
#re-installed pulseaudio
sudo apt install wireplumber pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pipewire pipewire-bin pipewire-pulse

System
OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur) x86_64
Host: HP ProDesk 400 G3 DM
Kernel: Linux 6.12.96+deb13-amd64
DE: Xfce4 4.20
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7500T (4) @ 3.30 GHz

system has a horrible internal single speaker; Sound bar plugged into the headphone jack for speakers

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CX20632 Analog [CX20632 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

and a funny Story setting my umask - long Story short:

1.) my old Approach

cat ~/.bashrc.d/set_umask

# ...
# umask 0077
# ...

works fine in Shell Context, but not in Desktop Context, e.g. for Dolphin

2.) ALL tried Solutions (/etc/login.defs, pam_umask.so etc.) DID NOT WORK - WHY - ANY IDEAS ?

3.) Finally, setting the desired umask in /etc/passwd WORKS:

sed -i 's/:\/home\/user:/umask=077:\/home\/user:/' /etc/passwd

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04a9:1909 Canon, Inc. CanoScan LiDE 110

sudo adduser [yourname] saned
sudo adduser [yourname] scanner

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules

# for Cannon LiDE110 add the following in 65-libsane.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04a9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1909", MODE="0664", GROUP="scanner", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

then reboot your system.   The scanner should be working with sane-utils and i prefer to use simple-scan.

for what it is worth this scanner is working good, no color issues.

But, chances are you knew this already.