What is broken is the setup. When you reach tasksel, when doing a netinstall, if you *only* choose to install LXDE, and not, for example, XFCE, then you end up with connman-gtk as the WiFi manager.

The first time you log into the desktop, you have to click on Preferences, Connman Settings, and then it sets up in the tray. So you click on the tray icon, and the window opens, which shows that WiFi is off. So you click on the button, and turn WiFi on. But instead of the window populating with nearby WiFi networks, it remains empty.

I've read about some people turning it off and on several times until it works. But as far as I can determine, connman-gtk is deprecated. I read somewhere that it's been abandoned since 2021. So, we've lost WICD and connman, and all that's left is good ole network-manager!

Here's where the story gets even stranger: I uninstalled connman-gtk and installed network-manager-gnome. After rebooting, and logging into the desktop, the network-manager-gnome was sitting in the tray. But it was "divorced" from the network hardware. The message I saw when I hovered over the tray icon was something about it being unattached. I'm sorry, now I can't remember the exact wording.

The only way I could get network-manager-gnome to work, was to start completely over, and *this time* choose to install "Devuan Desktop Environment" and/or "XFCE Desktop Environment". Then, when I log into the desktop, network-manager-gnome is sitting in the tray, and I'm connected to the WiFi network, and I can scan for other networks nearby!

Evidently, tasksel knows some tricks I don't, or there's some missing dependencies I don't know about, but tasksel does. Once I'm up and running with XFCE, then I can install LXDE, and everything works!

By the way: I am not complaining about Devuan at all! Debian Linux has the same issue: if I *only* install LXDE at the tasksel point, I get connman-gtk, etc, just as I described above.

I don't need any help getting up and running, everything is good. But my curiosity has definitely been piqued. There may not be as much info about LXDE because it's not a popular desktop anymore, and it does require a little but of tweaking. But it's not difficult, and works very well for my purposes.

Thanks for any feedback, and have a nice day! ~James

While installing Beowulf using the NetInst ISO, I chose "Standard Utilities" and "Print Server" from tasksel. After rebooting, I installed alsa-utils, xorg, wicd, lxde-core and a handful of other lxde packages. After adding a sound driver to modconf and firmware, I rebooted once more. Note: this is an Acer Chromebook 11, model C740.

Now I added system-config-printer. On the LXDE menu, I chose, under Preferences, Print Settings. The dialog was locked, and clicking unlock had no effect. So I was unable to add a printer.

So I executed

su -
system-config-printer

The error message was, "cannot open display". I had no choice but to install sudo, add my username in /etc/group, logoff and login, then setup my printer with

sudo system-config-printer

Comments, anyone?

This How-to assumes you have a computer running Devuan which can "host" media files for other computers on the network. The other computers will be running a Kodi client, which could even be a Kodi app installed from the Android play store. Sorry, I know nothing about Apple Store apps.

1. Preliminary steps:
a. Create a folder in your home directory called Media. (This will be referenced later)
b. Create 2 sub-folders in Media called Albums and Movies. Albums will hold music extracted from your CD's using asunder or some other CD ripping package in conjunction with picard (MusicBrainz) or some other music tagging software. Kodi prefers MusicBrainz tags. Movies will hold videos in the form Movie Name (yyyy).mp4. This can consist a series of flat files all inside Movies, or each movie can be in its own sub-folder. Kodi recommends the latter; however, it is your choice.

2. Install SAMBA. As root:

apt-get install samba

3. The samba package includes a rather complex configuration file /etc/samba.smb.conf. As root, move this out of the way:

cd /etc/samba
mv smb.conf smb.conf.bkp

4. Use an editor to create a new configuration file. For example, as root:

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

5. You can copy and paste this configuration text for smb.conf:

[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = hostname
mangled names = no

[Media]
path = /home/username/Media
guest ok = yes
guest only = yes
writable = no
browsable = yes

Note: Substitute the actual values for your hostname and username.

Note: The mangled names line prevents SAMBA from converting file names to an 8-character Windows-compatible format when they contain "special" characters such as colons, ampersands, commas, etc. It is preferable never to use special characters in movie names. For example, the file name "Jekyll and Hide (1990).mp4" will be properly "scraped" by Kodi even though the theatrical name is Jekyll & Hyde.

Note: The [Media] section label will appear in some clients. It is very useful to name this to be identical to the folder name containing the source files, which I named Media in step 1.

6. After creating the new configuration file, test it for correctness with

testconf

The above command need not be executed as root.

7. Finally, as root, restart SAMBA:

/etc/init.d/samba-ad-dc restart

Everything from here on out happens on the client side. From inside Kodi, add the SMB link/source and individually add Movies and Albums. Configuring Kodi is beyond the scope of this How-To.

SAMBA can seem overwhelming, so I merely wished to provide a simple configuration file, which I am using myself with great success. This How-To is based on a previous attempt to illustrate how to setup SAMBA, but contains more Kodi-specific instructions.

On the "host" computer, you can, of course, add photos and other media items inside the Media folder. Enjoy your media!

1. Create a folder in your home directory. For this tutorial, call it Share.
2. Install samba:

sudo apt-get install samba

3. From the command line, navigate to /etc/samba
4. Move the config file out of the way:

sudo mv smb.conf smb.conf.bkp

5. Create a new, simple smb.conf, as follows:

[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = hostname
mangled names = no
path = /home/username/Share

[Share]
guest ok = yes
guest only = yes
writable = no
browsable = yes

Note: replace username with your actual user name.
Note: replace hostname with your actual host name.
Note: [Share] appears in some clients. It is useful to name it the same as the share folder.
Note: The mangled names=no prevents SAMBA from rewriting filenames which contain Windows special characters, such as colons, commas, and ampersands. It is better not to use Windows special characters in filenames.

6. Enter the command

testconf

and read the results. Is everything OK?

7. Start/Restart the SAMBA server with

sudo /etc/init.d/samba-ad-dc restart

Now simply populate the Share folder with your content.

Use case: this is my setup for a Kodi media source, and it works great! Within Source, I have Movies and Albums with filenames and folders  corresponding Kodi protocols.