For GRUB use the GRUB_FONT option in /etc/default/grub. Or just write your own grub.cfg instead and don't set the font (remove the GRUB packages to prevent the configuration file being overwritten after kernel upgrades).

In the light of day, when it comes to using the hardware native screen font, there are actually two advantages for using Head's solution.  One, as he says: it's less hacky.  The other: um, their solution works and mine doesn't.  I don't know why my testing was so abysmal.

But wait!  There's another solution!  It's hacky, but it works:

mv /etc/console-setup /etc/xxconsole-setup

The advantage is that if you ever want to reverse this, you don't have to have access to a DVD, or a USB stick, or the Internet, to do so, because you won't have to reinstall console-setup.  Just reverse the rename.

Aaaand, for esthetic consistency goodness, you can go full hacky:

mv /boot/grub/fonts /boot/grub/xxfonts

To fix this bug, preventing the use of an artificial font, make the following configuration change:

rm /bin/setupcon

Less hacky solution:

# apt purge console-setup

rm /bin/setupcon

The results are delightful, I still get my virtual consoles, and I've never looked back.

update-grub

after you have made any changes to the grub configuration files, otherwise the changes will have no effect.

Geoff

"Settling on nomodeset" means that I could boot, press "e" to edit the commands, find the "linux" line, and add nomodeset as one of the parameters. That worked. But my application runs while I'm away, and on power failure followed by power restore, I want the application to start up without human invervention.  So pressing "e" is not an option there.  The page does say how to make the nomodeset parameter permanent and automatic.

The page first advises editing /boot/grub/menu.lst, but that file doesn't exist. No problem: the page goes on to advise that on "modern Debian systems" one should instead edit /etc/grub.d/10_linux. Look for the "linux" command, and add the parameter (in this case, "nomodeset") to that line.  It turns out there are two such lines; I modified both of them.  It had no effect whatsoever; that is, when I rebooted, (a) pressing "e" presented me with a "linux" line that did not include "nomodeset", and (b) after the system finished booting, /dev/fb0 was present. Further, I found that crippling /etc/grub.d/10_linux (with s/linux/linus/, s/LINUX/LINUS/, s/Linux/Linus, just for fun), or removing that file entirely, didn't change how devuan booted. That file seems to have zero effect on boot. Hmm.

It turns out that the answer (at least for devuan 3.0) is:

Edit /etc/default/grub. Find this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"

Add to that line one or all of these five arguments:

vga=normal
nofb
nomodeset
video=vesafb:off
i915.modeset=0

I changed that line to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet nomodeset"

Then close the edit and run update-grub.

When you reboot, you'll notice two things. First, if you press "e" while in grub, you'll see that the nomodeset is there on the linux line. Second, when rebooting has finished, you'll notice that /dev/fb0 is absent.

The kernel.org link is interesting, and worth looking at more closely at some future point.