Thanks for your help.
Mike

Did you get dma as a Devuan package?

Of course, and the link I dropped points to the Devuan package index.

$ apt show dma
Package: dma
Version: 0.13-1+b1
Priority: optional
Section: mail
Source: dma (0.13-1)
Maintainer: Arno Töll <arno@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 165 kB
Provides: mail-transport-agent
Depends: ucf (>= 0.28), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, libc6 (>= 2.33), libssl3 (>= 3.0.0)
Conflicts: mail-transport-agent
Replaces: mail-transport-agent
Homepage: https://github.com/corecode/dma
Tag: implemented-in::c, interface::daemon, mail::smtp, mail::transport-agent,
 protocol::smtp, protocol::ssl, role::program, works-with::mail
Download-Size: 52.1 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus/main amd64 Packages
Description: lightweight mail transport agent

Sure:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

I'm not on that system now so can't post sources.list but think it correct.
Perhaps you would post here what's in yours.

Thanks,
Mike

What does Devuan supply for an MTA? Most of the distributions I have used in the past used exim, later exim4. but thatś huge and over kill for a single user system.

The default MTA is still exim4, and the same alternatives are available as in Debian. For single-user systems with an external smtp server I quite like dma.

The vast majority of packages in Devuan are Debian packages, so while you can install most things from the Debian repos (bearing DontBreakDebian in mind), there's usually no reason to.

Almost certainly not, they're just unit files that came with packages merged from Debian (see above). There's no reason to delete them (or filter them out to begin with) though, as they do nothing by themselves.

Just like Debian, tasksel is "everything and the kitchen sink" mode, especially with recommends enabled. The usual Debian solutions apply - i.e. installing only what you actually want.
As for removing things, "start over" depends on where you started from, no? The task-desktop and lxde metapackages might be a good start, or go over the apt / dpkg logs and build a list.

I doubt it, i386 and amd64 contain an almost identical set of packages. More likely you don't have all the sections enabled in your sources...
Kinda hard to guess from here when you don't mention which packages you're talking about though.

These days, I just install an absolutely bare minimum base system, and then incrementally install packages that I know I'll need (--no-install-recommends is your friend here). Generally metapackages like libreoffice or xorg are good granular enough you don't end up with too many stray packages afterwards. But even for the latter I often only install individual packages (and their absolutely necessary dependencies).  It's a bit more work than one might be used to, though.

This install doesn´t come with an MTA and ´grep ¨MTA\|mail".../dpkg/packages gives me nothing.
What does Devuan supply for an MTA? Most of the distributions I have used in the past used exim, later exim4. but thatś huge and over kill for a single user system.

Since Devuan is derived from Debian is there a problem taking packages from the Debian repositories?

I installed Devuan primarily due to the claim it doesn´t depend on systemd yet I find /etc/systemd/system well populated.
Will I break the system if I delete /etc/systemd/ ?

After struggling to find a way to get an X window up I finally installed LXDE, boy was I flabergasted to see tasksel installed 1159 packages, not files but packages. Is there a simple way to delete all those packages and start over?

Several times I have tried to install a package only to find there is nothing available, could that be because I opted for 64 bit daedalus rather than 32 bit?

Thanks,
Mike