Installed Devuan NetINST devuan_ascii_2.0.0-beta_amd64_NETINST.iso.
Touchpad would not work and could not connect via wifi, so used usb mouse and ethernet.
Install is typical with these 2 notes:
    Selected devuan desktop, kde, and standard utilities during the install process, unchecked all other software.
    Selected SDDM as login manager, but this caused problems; best to select LIGHTDM.

Install went well and was able to reboot and login to a nice KDE desktop.  Initially had several problems; could not mount usb, could not access wireless... seemed something fundamentally wrong with permissions.  Turns out polkit is the culprit (thanks to "Irrwahn" for a post somewhere that fully explains the problem).

My system had libpolkit-backend-xxx-systemd and libpolkit-gobject-xxx-systemd installed, this is the problem.
Remove libpolkit-backend-xxx-systemd and libpolkit-gobject-xxx-systemd.
Install libpolkit-backend-xxx-elogind and libpolkit-gobject-xxx-elogind.
This fixed all permission problems.

Other problem was with SDDM; shutdown in KDE returns you to SDDM login screen.
Removed SDDM and re-installed LIGHTDM and all is well with shutdown.

System seems quite stable and certainly usable.