I'm looking to install Devaun on a pair of Lenovo T570 laptops. I run Gentoo on my T580 but have no interest in maintaining that on my wife and daughter's systems. I used Debian until systemd showed up, so I figure it's time to try Devuan.

I used to have a method for installing Debian where I could install a minimalist shell using the network CD/DVD and manually install only the shell utilities I wanted, then install just the very core of KDE/Plasma and then install only the things I wanted there as well. Is this possible in Devuan? Where do I start?

Next up is the network CD image. I can't seem to make it boot with my standard USB drive setup. I run Ventoy and it boots the Debian netinstall, but not the Devuan. It boots Gentoo, System Rescue CD, all kinds of Windows ISOs, and more, but it doesn't like Devuan. Has anybody managed to boot Devuan without wasting a 256GB drive for a netinstall ISO? I don't really have a spare drive and most of my drives are quite large and not suitable for such a tiny ISO.