@sg1:  thanks, but same happened for a new user.

added:  I had previously removed elogind [by moving links in /etc/runit], and forgot.  That solves 23s waits, but if I try to remove the elogind packages, it wants to replace it with consolekit.  Why do I need that?

Hello @ralph.ronnquist.  Quick answer is I don't know.  Void Linux is not derived from any other distro, and so goes back to the originating sources [X.org?].   I will have to ask the Void people if anyone has used "seatd";  they tend to like display managers instead like "lightdm".

update:  I see Void has Runit "sv" services configured so that I can "just" enable the "seatd" service.   I still don't understand how seatd will find out that startx needs it.  All will be revealed?

@soren:  thanks for the reply.  As I don't have a DM, After console login, i type "startx".  There is no elogind.  I do not knowingly run "startx" as root, and "ps -el | grep Xorg" shows that it is running as "me" and not root. Maybe "seatd" is doing this silently.  I will have to explore what is happening here.

On Void Linux, I run "startx" as "me", but I see that Xorg runs with uid=0;  not good.  Interestiingly. Void does not have seatd, Consolekit2, elogind or anything similar.

OK, I resolved my "issues" installing a minimal

  devuan_daedalus_5.0.1_amd64_netinstall.iso

I put the "sysvinit" version on /dev/sda6, and "runit" on /dev/sda7.  In both cases, the "Software selection" consisted just "standard system utilities" [ie no "Desktop Environment"], and installation completed.  After installation, I added xorg, openbox, tint2, lxterminal, and was able to "startx" to produce a welcome "black screen" that I can work with!

I don't know why I found this so difficult, but thanks for your patience.

@fsmithred:  thanks, I will try that.  Tried it and it hung after the message saying that the network manager was starting.  I switched to tty2, and was able to login, but I am not sure what other daemons I have to prevent from running so that it will just work.

In the interim, I tried install [on a different partition] without any X11 packages, just Console stuff, and on reboot it stopped [hung] after the message "Starting bluetooth:  bluetoothd".  I guess no-one tried that yet.

Thanks for all your replies.  I will use l3afpad for now [can't see the difference].  None of the source.list alternatives worked.  I have to read further docs to find what I am missing.  At least such obscure packages as rfkill, xkbset and lsyncd are there!

Now that I see that leafpad was gtk2, which is not long for this world, it is good to see that https://github.com/stevenhoneyman is continuing development in l3afpad and gtk3.  I am pleased!

@fsmithred:  I just re-installed with mixed success.  I was able to skip bootloader, and it completed without crashing. However, on reboot, it failed with a familiar error:  it was expecting a FAT filesystem [ie it thinks it is UEFI], but after ctrl-D it continues on to a login prompt.  I have been here before, perhaps when I tried to install Devuan earlier in the year [or a Devuan-derived distribution].

I just got a libreboot laptop, which was delivered with Debian-proper and [I think] UEFI;  what horrors await once I have installed "something" to replace Debian?

minor update:  my libreboot seems to be MBR-based, since using fdisk I was forced to create the 4th partition as "extended" so that 5th etc were logical partitions.  Beyond confused about the role of UEFI.

Thanks @Camtaf:  the computer has been an MBR system from the early days.  My only recourse may be to try a Devuan-derived distribution that uses a different installer.

@fsmithred:  I have no problem booting the USB-based netinst installer, but it fails trying to install the bootloader.  It fails before I can select UEFI or MBR.  If I continue to the end, the system is left thinking that it is UEFI, and presumably looks for a FAT partition, which is not there [will never be there].

If only there was a shell script to install Devuan, then I could remove the UEFI part.  Without much investment of time, I cannot debug the Devuan installer.

Thanks @andyp67.  The drive has several partitions with different distributions [antix, void] that I do not want to distrurb.  If the Devuan installer hadn't failed, I would have declined the offer to scribble over my hand-crafted 8-line grub.cfg file.  Surely, I cannot be the only person using MBR BIOS computers?  The only faint memory was that trying to install the grub bootloader again sometime worked.

I don't even know where the "uses UEFI" flag is in a failed install, so that I could repair things.   I can't see how zeroing the start of the partition would avoid the installer crashing.

@hunter0one: I don't see any signs that Void are changing anything.  I don't use elogind on Void, perhaps because I don't use any DM.

In 2015 when I used "sinit" to init Debian7 then Devuan, I used "mdev" plus "something" to effect hot-plugging devices [I forget].  Nowadays, the "mdevd" daemon is available to handle that [not used it yet]. 

The problem is in the lib[g]udev libraries, which are required by firefox, chromium AND all webkit-based browsers.  I can't see what exactly these libraries ACTUALLY do.  The Linux kernel creates static devices, and "mdevd" would respond to new devices and set correct permisions for them.  Will someone save me from reading the source code to find out.