Is it possible you have auto-updates/unattended-updates turned on?  If you do there is nothing
for you to ever upgrade.  I've only larked around jessie for the amount of time it takes to switch
repositories, update/upgrade and go upstream.
Jessie was stable for debian last month, so we are a few weeks behind.  Big deal, try Arch if you
don't worry about security bugs popping up all the time about what you have been running for
months if not years. 

If you chose an off distribution package that does not bring any dependencies on of its own or even
worse replacing some of the existing ones, at worse case scenario it may not work.  If you mix
match dependencies then you are on your own and things may get irreversibly messed up.

Then there is the case of someone jumping up to testing or unstable, don't like how things work and
reverses back to stable and expects updates.  They may not come for months or even years unless
they are a security patch that affects everyone. 

Replacing common dependency packages with something newer will have the same ill effects on the
rest of the system whether you jail the package or not.

One of the hacking fixes I thought may be reversible is to install a second dm, and since slim is commonly used in devuan I tried it.
Although slim depends on a library for drawing and alterin png images (it sounds insignificant) specifically libpng12 (or 1.2), while
a graphics library called libpng16 exists.  Apt will not install slim without libpng12.  LibPng12 only exists in Jessie, nowhere else.
So I picked up 12 from Jessie and installed slim.

update:
I romeved a couple of lock files from /tmp but that didn't change anything.  On my last frozen session I noticed that the cursor was blinking in the lightdm login screen where user would go.  The mouse cursor would freeze right on the password box.  So without seeing anythin on screen on a next attempt I entered the user name, hit TAB which takes you to the next box, entered the passw and hit enter.  The cursor on the login screen stopped blinking.
Wild remote chance for something to still work, I pulled both usb plugs for keyboard and mouse, then plugged them back in.
Guess what?  It is all working again, I am writing this message from the ceres installation.  So now I know what to start looking for.

I wouldn't say [SOLVED] yet!

I don't like leaving things broken, so I used a wheezy iso to install ol'trusty wheezy with sysvinit, and the upgrade to Devuan went
easier than from Jessie.  Then if I get your live working on an other pc I will copy your /home and /root stuff into the new installation and
install everything missing.  That pc had Jessie on for a while, and it run sluggish.  Wheezy run at least twice faster!!

Nope, no run.
On default as soon as it stabilized I right clicked, the menu came up and it froze.  Only power supply interruption could get me out.
On nomodeset??  it froze before I even clicked.
I know loading to ram will not work with 256K and what is the other option?

Not the place, not the time, I have already been banned once by golinux, but we do not all live in the US or have respect for constitutional amendments within dictatorships.

What's so ugly in Devuan that you need to change, I'll help you out.  You don't like the purpy pale yellow coordination?
Apart from that I can hardly find anything specific to Devuan and its appearance, but you can change whatever you don't like.

No, but don't worry about it, I'll get used to it.
The fm works fine, but on LXDE (where you can have openbox menus) the desktop works like a fm.
I use a common folder for desktop for all installations, and that is where I arrange everything I am working on.  With the basic desktop menu right-click gives you the options of ^C ^X ^V on files and folders.  When I have obmenu or ob-generator on I lose that ability.  Small thing really, I just thought that maybe you may know a way around it in making that menu-item.  Dragging files to a subfolder of the desktop folder works the same and also doing it with keys  ^C ^X ^V also works.

Anyway, don't waste any time on this, work on the i386 project, and keep it gnome free.
You vuu-do chile you!

Maybe we should get together and produce a guitar/music distro out of Devuan.  Tuning, Recording, Editing, Publishing, Broadcasting.  X-road-Vuu-do-chile Devuan  or De-Mojo-vuan

I have a 32b box with 256kB of Ram, I will give it a shot.

I removed pulseaudio pulseaudio-control and pavuvolume
I have sound on everything and alsa controls and mixer work
But that is my box, I've heard some that really need it.
Mozilla?  What is that?

That solved the puzzle, I thought the package was native in stable and was discontinued, this is why it was thrown away when I upgraded to ascii/ceres.