What about this Debian bug https://github.com/mattermost/desktop/issues/2853?
Will Devuan follow Debian's package policy?

I don't understand your question. That looks like a mattermost or electron bug, not a debian bug, and it looks like they already fixed it by removing unnecessary dependencies.

... if I remember correctly, I've downloaded the .deb file as the driver, unpacked it, and placed the firmware folder on a USB flash drive.

I guess there is the mistake. AFAIK the installer looks for a deb file.

I'm not sure why the installer would not use the driver you provided, I'll take a look at that part.  Could you tell me the steps you took so I can reproduce it?

rbit, if I remember correctly, I've downloaded the .deb file as the driver, unpacked it, and placed the firmware folder on a USB flash drive.

I see that there is a new . iso to download.

What about this Debian bug https://github.com/mattermost/desktop/issues/2853?
Will Devuan follow Debian's package policy?

Some packages that are present in Daedalus (Bookworm) are missing in Excalibur (Trixie). Some of them, like gconf2 and gconf-service, are only available in Daedalus/Bookworm. Others are in Ceres/Sid. This produces a bit of a 'Frankendevuan' situation."

The iwlwifi firmware issue is a bug on that iso.  A new iso should be making its way to the mirrors soon.  The problem was there was a newer firmware (firmware-iwlwifi_20250410-2_all.deb) but Contents-firmware listed an older one (firmware-iwlwifi_20241210-1_all.deb).

I'm not sure why the installer would not use the driver you provided, I'll take a look at that part.  Could you tell me the steps you took so I can reproduce it?

That seems like an odd question, it should probably be removed from excalibur due to usrmerge being required now.

Sure it is. But you should specify the network and its details as if it was fully working.

Not possible. There are no network interfaces, then no wpassupplicant no nmtui even /etc/apt/sources.list points to cdrom

I've made install with devuan_excalibur_6.0-20250605_amd64_netinstall.iso to AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, AMD Radeon 890M. I've flashed it to usb flash drive (no ventoy, rufus etc).

Expert install.
First error: The missing firmware files are : iwlwifi-ty********

Second error: No network interfaces detected

Then "The system can be set up to symlink /bin and /sbin to /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, respectively. ....If unsure, the safe choice is "No".
However, the default choice was Yes.
So,Yes.

Third error: Bad archive  mirror #of cause, there is no internet
Then "standard_system_utilities" - selected
"Update NVRAM variables to automatically boot into Devuan?" - Yes

Forth error: wpa_passphrase not found  #got it from https://packages.debian.org/trixie/wpasupplicant  unfortunately there is no such site for Devuan. Probably, wpasupplicant is stored somewhere in devuan_excalibur_6.0-20250605_amd64_netinstall.iso...
Then mounted Devuan flash drive to /media/cdroom to satisfy dependencies.
The same story with dhclient
Then tasksel, laptop....
Finally, apt install DE_of_choice (KDE) and reboot

I was able to log in successfully. To my surprise AMD graphics drivers and vulkan were installed.

BUT... shit happens. Fifth error: /EFI/debian is overridden. It was "debian" because devuan1 has been installed through migration. Why it's called "debian" again ?

Conclusion. Too complicated. May be it'll be simpler to install Devuan through Vmware on physical partitions and then boot normally?

This was an expert install of devuan_excalibur_6.0-20250605_amd64_netinstall.iso. I'm not sure if expert is necessary to get this firmware question.

I answered "no" to providing the firmware on external media and proceeded.
When it got to network detection and configuration, it only saw eth0. Since eth0 is broken, dhcp failed. I set it up manually and gave it a good local address.

When it came to setting up the package manager, I had to proceed without a mirror. While it was installing the base system, I switched to vt2 and saw that it was installing firmware-iwlwifi.

After the sofware install but before it installed grub bootloader, I opened a shell and tried to set up the wireless.
wlan0 did not show up with 'ip a'. I chrooted the installed system (in /target) and tried configuring wlan0 in /etc/network/interfaces. That didn't work. wpasupplicant was not installed. rfkill was not installed, so I couldn't see if the wireless card got switched off. That's when I gave up.

In past releases, the network setup saw the wireless hardware and let me choose whether to set up eth0 or wlan0. That didn't happen here. I'll pass this info on to the iso builder.

Reported here:
https://bugs.devuan.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=894

Is there any chance you could run the installer again and get a screenshot or camera shot of the screen that asks you to supply the wireless driver on usb stick? I'd like to have that for reference, but I can't reproduce it easily. Thanks.

I don't know if it's possible to install from net install without internet?

Sure it is. But you should specify the network and its details as if it was fully working.
BTW: most of the network drivers are part of the kernel.

I want to know if you stopped the installation at the point where it asks for the driver or if you continued without it and it failed at some later point.

Normally you can ignore that request for the driver and you will be able to set up the network during the install.