No guaranty!

$ cat migration.notes.txt

# commands done as "root" 

# stage 1:
apt update
apt upgrade
#apt install sysvinit-core ntp              # no X
apt install sysvinit-core ntp slim openbox  # simple DM and WM to not loose X eventually 
reboot

# stage 2
# keep network as it is
echo 'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="net.ifnames=1"' >>/etc/default/grub
update-grub

keyring="devuan-keyring_2023.05.28_all.deb"     # daedalus 
[ ! -f "$keyring" ] && wget http://deb.devuan.org/merged/pool/DEVUAN/main/d/devuan-keyring/"$keyring"
dpkg -i "$keyring"

file="/etc/apt/sources.list.debian"
[ ! -f "$file" ] && cp -a /etc/apt/sources.list "$file" 
cat << EOF >/etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
# add recommended repos 
EOF

apt update
apt upgrade
apt dist-upgrade

apt purge systemd  # just to be sure
# likely, more stuff was de-installed  
# a syslogd may be missing

The problem seems to be with removing systemd at Pid 1, and not locking the system.

# apt install sysvinit-core 
# reboot

and init is pid 1.

The instructions you quote for Stretch (10) to Beowulf (3) are the 'official' Devuan instructions.
https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation … to-beowulf
and should also still work, at least on bare metal, as the source and destinations systems are both essentially frozen.
This does assume that the repositories are still there: Beowulf is now quite old.

If you coming from Bullseye (or earlier) you can convert that and then upgrade to Daedalus: although the upgrade process to Daedalus hasn't yet been formally documented several of us have done it and reported back to the Forum as to how we did it. It's pretty straightforward.

As to converting from Bookworm to Daedalus there aren't as yet any instructions for this on the Devuan site.
I have seem some discussion of the issues on the Devuan DNG list and it doesn't seem quite as straightforward if systemd is already installed (as you seem to have found).
The problem seems to be with removing systemd at Pid 1, and not locking the system.
Others more involved than me may be able to better answer how, if at all, this can be done.
And if it is possible then no doubt the instructions on how to do it will be published when Daedalus goes live.

1) has chosen Gnome as their DM and
2) has an Nvidia graphics card and
3) has chosen to try Wayland and has got it working successfully.

LABEL="gdm_prefer_xorg"
#RUN+="/usr/libexec/gdm-runtime-config set daemon PreferredDisplayServer xorg"
GOTO="gdm_end"

LABEL="gdm_disable_wayland"
#RUN+="/usr/libexec/gdm-runtime-config set daemon WaylandEnable false"
GOTO="gdm_end"

LABEL="gdm_end"

Wayland supposedly works(!) but when I click firefox, it seems to be loading but it won't open, and finally will shutdown later. I tried to remove that gdm.rules file, still the same thing.

If you don't need CUDA then you can just delete it, nvidia works fine without it.

There was (is still?) a bug in the code that dates back to 2014 that can lead to it not initialising properly. Nothing to do with systemd, just poor code.

See my post dating back to April 2020.

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=20903#p20903

It worked when I applied the same things with debian 12. By the way, is nvidia-persistenced important? It doesn't work in devuan properly. I assume it has hard dependency to systemd.