Did you install desktop-base?  That should give you the default darkpurpy theme which uses Clearlooks-Phenix-DarkPurpy theme that includes an OB theme.  Or you can just choose that theme and not get the darkpurpy grub and login.   Note that since that was captured, the icons were recolored to a nice purpy color also.

*Edit*  For this theme to work properly it needs GTK2 and GTK3 and something Xfce specific.   The regular clearlooks theme breaks badly in ASCII.  desktop-base pulls in all the necessaries.

I'm surprised that http://devuanpackages.viralds.it/ is still functional at all.  It was an early contribution to Devuan but now we have our own in-house version.  amprolla3 has a way of redirecting to Debian that might have stumped both those searches.  Links to https://pkginfo.devuan.org are all over the Devuan website along with other useful resources. 

Happy to hear that.  All's well  that ends well.    With FLOSS there are as many ways to solve a problem as there are users.

Don't you WANT to see if there's a big red failure in those scrolling lines?

Unfortunately.  I find the concept behind these all-in-one dropins distasteful to say the least.  It just doesn't feel right in Linux . . . </rant>

I suspect it's a Mate/Gnome thing rather than an application thing because it's working here even after a long idle time.  Check the Mate window manager options.  Also look for a Mate Settings Editor and find those apps.  I can't remember much of my Gnome2 days  . . . that wasn't long after Y2K.  LOL!

Hmmm . . . I use Atril on Xfce and just opened a PDF.  Maxed it. Closed it. Opened it again and it popped up maximized.  Opened a different PDF and it opened maximized also.  I checked in the Menu and under Edit the last option is Save Current Settings as Default.  Under view there is also an option for fullscreen which is a bit different than maximized but you might play with it.  Sorry, don't have AbiWord installed.  What DE are you using?  That could possibly make a difference too.

@dxrobertson . . . I thought that the Intel *lake series of processors wouldn't boot linux.  I know someone who got bitten by that.  So something to research.  I have always used Intel and everything has worked.  But audio on my current chip required a rather fussy .asoundrc file to get it working.

Not trying to dis this wonderful forum but . . . that's a bit like getting details about a project from a youtube channel rather than reading the official FOIA documents.

Indeed! 

No.  We only use the <releasename> (ie: jessie, ascii, beowulf, ceres ) to avoid confusion when Debian and Devuan release cycles are out of sync

Have you tried single click instead of double?

@James1138 . . . never use Debian repos directly.  Our Devuan mirror(s) filter unwanted packages that are incompatible with Devuan.