Many thanks for the replies.

@ fsmithred

Here I thought that I had everything sorted, but I compiled a low latency kernel following the instructions here and now even though I changed the entries in the Devuan /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to as follows, it refuses to boot, but just cycles through the countdown from 10-0 and back again:

UI menu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE Welcome to Devuan - Debian without SystemD
TIMEOUT 100
DEFAULT devuan

	LABEL devuan
		MENU LABEL Devuan
		KERNEL /vmlinuz-4.9.88-lowlatency
		APPEND initrd=/initrd.img-4.9.88-lowlatency ro root=/dev/sdd1

Interestingly, if I mount the Devuan partition /boot/extlinux/ and manually rename all of the files that end in ".amd64" and add ".bak" at the end, and reboot, I get the same error about the partition /dev/sdd1 no longer existing, as I did when I tried editing the Devuan /etc/inittab and changed:

# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:

to

# The default runlevel.
id:1:initdefault:

sooo I am pretty sure that there is some sort of glitch in Devuan ASCII, as switching runlevels in the /etc/inittab shouldn't cause an error like that, and I can't imagine that renaming files with ".bak" should do that either.

Looking forward

Very cool. Thanks.
----
So in reference to a triple boot system, extlinux and Devuan, I assume that Devuan continues to use runlevels as Debian used to do with Sys V. What argument should be included in these lines

	LABEL devuan
		MENU LABEL Devuan - Debian without SystemD
		COM32 chain.c32
		APPEND hd2 1

in /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to boot into runlevel 1???
----
Well, alternatively it is possible to go in and edit /etc/inittab, changing

id:2:initdefault:

to

id:1:initdefault:

This is good if you need to run NVIDIA driver install scripts that are very sensitive to any X.org running, but it is only a root command line. I have discovered that it is possible to

# su - username

to get into the user account. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to run an X session in that mode, as permission is denied...

That was the original plan. As far as I understand, while extlinux is able to read the entire file system (any file system) it still needs a boot loader at the target.

I followed your instructions to do that on another computer, which of course changed the MBR, but leaves /boot/grub on the system. It didn't interfere with anything on a single system boot, but I was wondering how that would play out with a triple boot system. It is of course possible to

# rm -r /boot/grub

but again was unsure if that would potentially cause problems with or affect the stability of a triple boot system.

Thanks. I know. I have set up the necessary i3.desktop files if they didn't exist, or if the existing ones didn't appear to be working with slim, but never had any success booting from anything other than the default WM. Having gained some experience with Slackware, I prefer starting at the command line, logging in, using the Slackware xwmconfig script, and then running

$ startx

I wish there was something similar for Devuan, thus avoiding the login manager for those users that like to keep it simple.

Regarding the ASCII "expert" installer, I personally am of the opinion that it has gotten too complicated. I assume that this is something that Debian has decided, but I don't recognize half of the options any more, and for some weird reason, it appears that a choice of login managers is only available with LXQT. Being a happy WM switcher, depending on my workflow (XFCE/i3) the current situation is a nightmare as SLIM or SLiM is no longer developed, and provides no functional, practical means by which it is possible to easily switch between window managers.

Actually, it seems that I avoided installing GRUB in the normal install. On the second prompt, I exited to the install menu.

# extlinux --install /boot/extlinux

doesn't work. I get the error:

# extlinux --install /boot/extlinux
/bin/sh: 3: extlinux: not found

----
OK, I think I know where I went wrong. I should have done the following?

# chroot /target /bin/bash
# . /etc/profile 
# mkdir -p /boot/extlinux

Still a problem however:

# extlinux --install /boot/extlinux
bash: extlinux: command not found

@fsmithred Thanks for all the information. I installed Devuan ASCII-RC 64-bit netinstall with LXDE-QT and added the the KXStudio repo and enabled the GCC5 packages. After an apt update and upgrade, I added all of the packages that I could remember from Slackware's Studioware and Ubuntu Studio. Everything looked set to install, until tuxguitar kicked up a broken packages error that Synaptic couldn't recover from:
Unresolved dependencies, bla, bla:

If I get time tomorrow, I will try to complete an install of all of the packages, but as a point of departure, everything else looks good.

BTW, not crazy about LXDE-QT, but I really appreciate the ability to choose login managers during the expert install

$ command not found
# command not found

sxhkd was not in /usr/bin. Something is obviously wrong with the package. I originally had problems with so called "documentation", but I thought that I had overcome the problem. I tried re-cloning the git but all of a sudden, git was no longer installed (I didn't uninstall it) I tried reinstalling gcc and xcb, which also pulled in some dependencies that were not installed last time around for some reason. I cloned the git and then ran "make" but got some errors about missing lib.something.so files. I am not sure that sxhkd can be compiled under Devuan. I therefore gave up, and installed a .deb package that I had compiled under Ubuntu 16.04 before I eschewed systemd. Most things seem to be running as expected now (hot keys), but I have come across a weird quirk (only) when I try starting geany (installed with apt-get) from Dmenu:

Configuration directory could not be created (Permission denied). There could be some problems using Geany without a configuration directroy. Start Geany anyway?

As it is, I have had to create a ~/.local and a ~/.local/share share directory manually, as well as a ~/.config/leafpad directory, for some reason, which I do not understand as I had none of these problems with missing directories when I installed i3wm using the same method.

I followed the instructions and reduced my .xinitrc file to the following:

sxhkd &
lxterminal &
exec bspwm

The terminal fills the entire space (as it should), but I can't get any response from my hot keys, even when quitting the terminal. I compared the permissions for sxhkdrc on my Devuan install to the Slackware version and they are the same. I am at a loss as to why the hot keys aren't working.