Thank you for your help! I did reinstall all and choosewm  is now installed and work perfectly (login in console mode, after password, command "go" = symlink to startx, at first use choose a wm and demark the field "show each at restart" if you only want to change wm in special situations).

msi wrote:

On a general note, if a package is in Debian and doesn't depend on systemd, that same package will be in Devuan

does the reverse be true that if a package is not at the Devuan depository, then it depends on systemD and will not be available in binary? can it be compiled or is too difficult for a novice

As far as possible, packages that have systemd dependencies in Debian will be rebuilt without those dependencies by the Devuan developers. That's essentially what constitutes Devuan, technically. So, there should be no need for you to rebuild any of those packages.

Why do you think that? Have you tried running the apt-cache command from my first post?

choosewm does not seem to be at the jessie depot

Are you sure about that? From what i can tell it seems to be available in both Devuan Jessie and Ascii.

does the reverse be true that if a package is not at the Devuan depository, then it depends on systemD and will not be available in binary? can it be compiled or is too difficult for a novice (choosewm does not seem to be at the jessie depot)

kind regards

apt-cache search choosewm

will give you the answer.

On a general note, if a package is in Debian and doesn't depend on systemd, that same package will be in Devuan, because, for the most part, Devuan tracks Debian's package repositories. In short: Devuan is Debian without systemd.

does Devuan offer such a possibility?