I'm not sure that's actually a benefit for users. Cause pretty much any potential buyer will abuse the massive userbase to sell even more personal data for even more money.

But since when was user-privacy of any concern to corporate US Gov't

From what I understand, it's a kernel thing. I'm not familiar with the particulars, but rebooting is never a bad option in such cases.

Clearly, you've missed the memo: Linux is not Win-OS!

In Devuan, like all Debian-based distro's, you add a repository to the /etc/apt/sources file. Then add the key to that repo via apt/dpkg, refresh apt via

apt-get update

then install any package from that repo via the normal method

apt-get install <package-name>

Removing it is as simple as

apt-get purge <package-name>

The purge option tells apt to completely remove any traces of the package, including config files and whatever else it installed/used, from your system.

If you want a GUI to help you out, Synaptic takes your hand, just explore the menu for the correct function.

You do NOT manipulate a database manually, like some Win-OS users seem to have taught themselves

I tried to stay out of this, I really did

Genetically modified foods (hyperfoods) are widely available in the US, where food standards are deliberately low to allow big farm maximize their profits.

Look where it led them 

Yes, hyperfoods are bad for your health. Which is why the EU has banned them. As a result, the population over here clearly has better judgemental powers to keep extremists out of a position dominating the various political stages

Brother offers a complete install script for MFC devices, which works based on some simple questions like model number etc. It installs and configures everything you need to get your Brother MFC working. It's also on the Linux support pages, in the install section. It worked a few weeks ago for my Devuan Stable install for a older (ancient?) MFC device. Make sure you run the installer as root! (it fetches and installs dependencies via apt/dpkg (can't remember))

I take it you've visited the LTSP pages?

https://ltsp.org/

About 15 yrs ago I managed to set up an LTSP server and to boot a client from it. Don't fool yourself, it's quite a job to set up the entire infrastructure: DHCP, FTP, DNS and only then LTSP as such. Effectively, you're setting up a very localized but complete mini-ISP. It can be done, I did, but it's worth getting pretty comfy on the CLI, cause you'll use it a lot. It also requires, due to DNS and DHCP, a physically separate network. Technically you might be able to get stuff working on your existing network, but only if you have unrestricted access to the router of your home network. Basically, you need to know what you're doing and if you do, you didn't have to ask

There might be something else going on you probably don't realize. Do the following:

su #become root, alternatively sudo su
fsck /media/<user>/<UUID> #check the file system for errors and repair if required
chown <user> /media/<user>/<UUID> #make sure the directory is owned by the user
chmod 777 /media/<user>/<UUID> #set permissions for the directory for general access

HTH!

There are more packages providing this functionality besides the pair you mentioned. You can find them with apt-search.

man apt

This is the line you need to add to /etc/fstab:

UUID=uuid-string-goes-here   /path/to/directory fs-type defaults 0 0

You're advised to mount the SSD in /media, but being Linux, you're free to mount it anywhere in the tree you'd like The fs-type is what you've used to format the drive in. If you formatted with ext4, just substitute ext4 instead of fs-type.

Assuming you mount the drive in /media/fast-storage, you'd need to set access rights to that directory to allow you access w/o any passwords at all:

chown <user>,<group> /media/fast-storage #as root

In this <user> is your user name and <group> is the name of the group your user is a member of (on Devuan, usually user- and group names are the same).
For instance, say your username is rank, the command would look like:

chown rank,rank /media/fast-storage

There's more to it, but this'll get you started

OK, I found an answer. Bit of a dirty work-around, but the errors are gone now.

As root, open /var/lib/dpkg/status in nano (or editor of choice) then search for the ipmitool package listing. The 2nd line reports its status, change this to

Status: purge ok config-files

Reload sources.list in your package manager then update your system. If all is well, no more errors!

As said, a dirty work-around as it doesn't address the issue of how that package got into that state in the first place and it's likely remnants of this packages remain on my system.

Well, TPlink was right, you need a router. Or at least a device that does NAT and DHCP. Your ISP reserves exactly 1 (one) IP address for your connection. You want to connect more then one device, so you need to share that IP address within your local network. That's what NAT (network address translation) stands for and DHCP actually does.

Suitable devices aplenty, here's a small selection in various price ranges:

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

MikroTik hEX S router

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 6P

Various FritzBox router models, including those for direct Fibre connection.

Some models have WiFi, but you can switch that off, as I do too.

This is why having separate partitions for stuff like /var, /usr and /tmp are advised. Certainly I do adhere to this

Your Downloads folder is huge and the key reason why your / has filled up. I take it you downloaded a lot so clearing that one out will release a decent amount of storage.