Just my 2 cents here: I run happily Devuan 5 with KDE Plasma with pure ALSA. I had to tailor /etc/modprobe/alsa.conf to convince Plasma to use my prefered sound output. YMMV.

VLC can be handy to troubleshoot, because in it you can change sound output on the fly.

Then, you can use dd, but you will have to be extremely cautious to not wipe out the wrong unit.
To use dd you have to write as root

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/YOUR-RAW-DEVICE

For instance:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde

Please note that there are not a number in the name of the unit. This is important.
Double check your typing before ENTER!!
Wait to completion and then use sync before unplugging the stick.

It is working for me. Madrid (Spain), fixed IP address, Firefox 51 32 bits, Debian 7.

Agreed.

In my use cases:

Small files around same partition: cp or dolphin.
Remote backup: rsync
Large files or multiple files, different partitions: midnight commander

For me, it depends on the previous status of the target drive. If it is empty, like in a brand new one, I start the installer in expert mode and do a manual partitioning. But if the drive already have same content (for instance, an undesired operating system), I start a live system and use gparted to wipe out previous partitioning and maybe I do the desired one. In either case, sometimes a manual tweak could be necessary.

Excellent!

I see your smile, but can't stop myself:

It is, but we rely on damn hardware :lol

Restarting the display manager restarts the X server. With SysV, service YOUR_DM restart. As I said, just logging out and in does not read the new configuration values. So, the procedure shoud be: log out, restart DM, log in again.

Understood. It will be very educational. I hope the best to you . By the way, I felt in love with the old X system when I succeded doing what you are trying now. Back then (circa 1998) I didn't know the very existence of ssh.

I had this problem trying to use HDMI sound output, but when I selected analogic output (the one asked for by OP), it worked.

Your cron entry misses the user field. I made the same error in my cron entry tailor-made for acme.sh

May be you'd need the full path of certbot, you just check it out, because I'm not sure.

Maybe we couldn't get nothing from my idea, but I would run a RAM checker, such as
https://www.memtest86.com/
Sometimes odd things happen when the OS reaches some previously unused RAM areas.

I would try to override the default system audio using VLC. This program can change audio output on the fly: Audio -> audio device (or similar, my interface is not in English). I used this method successfully to track down some similar issues in the past.