Ha, ha, I thought # meant that it was a comment, though I knew that the commands had to be executed via su/sudo. I thought it was a strange way to write it. Old programmers and all that.

and I personally use the convention of 'sudo' (instead of '$') to make it obvious.
I use hash for in-between command comments (because that's what they are in bash).

do something...
# have a coffee
do something else
# now you are done

will do nothing with that hash at the front

its a small nuisance, when compared to the 16:9 screen, which is just not adequate.

have a newer intel laopop that is better in some ways, but still the prefer the more premium line/thinkpad with the older apu/pro that is really silent.

think there is much progress on laptops with linux, just if you would buy a newer one with the qualcomm chipsets or so you wouild probably have a harder time running linux successfully atm, but that may change soon.

here is a ubuntu/list of certified laptops, but dont know the value of it or how it translates to devuan.

https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops

@rolfie inxi is not installed on either laptop, so I'm not sure that's the problem. I will install it and see what happens.

@fanderal I used your exact lines and rebooted, but the GRUB menu was still tiny. I'll play around with that some more.

1. Pick a font for your grub menu. DejaVu Sans Mono is in this example.

2. Convert the font to grub2's format using the grub-mkfont command, and set the font size:

# grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 \
--size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

3. In /etc/default/grub, add this GRUB_FONT line with the path to your freshly-converted font:

GRUB_FONT=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2

4. Enter # update-grub

This edit changes the font size in grub and the console to ~14. Adjust the '--size=' in the grub-mkfont cmd as needed. If the font is still pre-edit size after updating grub and you don't want to reboot, enter # setupcon -f in any console. This edit does not use the GRUB_GFXMODE line for resolution (commented).

inxi -Fz

The inxi package may need to be installed.

A way to tweak the grub screen font size is to modify the /etc/default/grub file.

# nano /etc/default/grub

Change the contents to show e.g.:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

You may modify the screensize further.
Then run:

# update-grub 

could use for hours without necessarily getting fatigued/

but with LED screens its different.

even ryzen can cnot come to the rescue, yet.

devuan is great, but the powerbook was too, very good laptop, in many ways.

basically my first laptop got , although it has worst viewing angle, a near perfect screen beside, with a matte 4:3, 1600x1200.

those today are hard to come by<
we get oled and fancy, but those seem flicker like crazy.
not that i dislked the samsung oled phone used for some time, but reading for hours on a flicker screen , i dont know.

ccfl is much softer to the eyes. hopefully we can get  better screen also for laptop< not that old laptop were perfect, far from, but there has been also some serious degreation, in many way.

I have two laptops, both HP, both 17", both running Devuan 5 MATE. #1 is Ryzen 3 and #2 is Ryzen 7. #1 is a few years old and works as I would expect. #2, however, acts like the device drivers have bugs.

During boot, I see a screen offering to boot Devuan or some other options. #1 works as expected, with the font being readable, maybe 14. #2 displays in a tiny font, maybe 6.

I have installed all of the AMD packages I can find: AMD64-microcode, firmware-amd-graphics, and all the ones offered by "apt update." Are there others?