It seems that I have discovered the source of the mystery.

My system is based on excalibur and the dbus daemons are excludes by a dbus-bin pin. In excalibur there is no turnstile. So installed it from antiX and the related packages and runit service too. Among these there is the optional package 'dbus-turnstile-user-session'. It contains a script '/etc/user_session.d/01_dbus':

Somehow this script catches the dependencies to dbus-bin.
If I remove 'dbus-turnstile-user-session' (which depends on turnstile), all programs that need dbus-bin will be removed.

So now I understand, why I had got no dependency complains, when I installed audacious.

I had not checked sound. Indeed, removing turnstile deactivates sound, even if I set audacious to alsa output.

'refracta_14_test_xlibre_turnstile-20260507_1411.iso' has the same login packages installed as my system.

But I have turnstile as well. If I would purge it, audacious, mousepad, xfburn and gcr would be removed too.
I could not detect why. Reverse depends of turnstile only show turnstile-dbgsym.

Now I have integrated these insights in /etc/refractasnaoshot.conf
The compression sections of my refractasnaoshot.conf now looks like this:

-----------------------------
[...]

# Uncomment one of the lines below to use xz or zstd compression for smaller iso.

# small and slow # relative size of the iso-image
#mksq_opt="-comp xz"              # (-4.1% to zstd -19 | -15,4% to zstd -1)
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -b 262144"       # (-2.0% to xz)
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -b 524288"       # (-3.8% to xz)
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -b 1048576"     # (-5.5% to xz)

# smaller and slower:
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -Xbcj x86"                        # (-1.5% to xz)
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -Xbcj x86 -b 524288"       # (-5.4% to xz)
#mksq_opt="-comp xz -Xbcj x86 -b 1048576"     # (-6.9% to xz)

# not as small but faster
#mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 22"     # (= zstd -19 | --ultra ?)
#mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 19"     # (-11.8% to zstd -1)
mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 15"      # (-11.1% to zstd -1)
#mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 8"       # (-7.0% to zstd -1)
#mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 3"       # (-3.1% to zstd -1)
#mksq_opt="-comp zstd -Xcompression-level 1"       # (-17.2% to lz4)

#mksq_opt="-comp lz4"     # (+20,8% to zstd -1)

[...]

Based on 'refracta_13.3_nox_amd64-20260501_1521.iso' I have created a similar system in qemu.
Already two years ago I had build such a system based on antiX-23 (bookworm). It is running stable on my desktop pc as my work horse.

These have been my steps:

(1) install refracta_13.3_nox with runit and seatd

(2) exclude unwanted packages via pins in /etc/apt/preferences.d:
00dbus-bin 00java-common 00libelogind0 00libsystemd0 00mono-runtime-common 00nodejs 00polkitd

(3) add antiX-26 repos to refracta
Give Devuan a higher priority than antiX in /etc/apt/preferences.d
To stay as close as possible to original Devuan I have turned on the antiX repos only when needed.
(i.e.: Arandr from Devuan cannot be installed – the antiX version is fine. Plank needs gconf-gsettings-backend from antiX to function properly.)
Once the base system has been completed, I shall keep the antiX repos turned on for upgrades.

(4) install from antiX-26:
# apt install turnstile runit-service-turnstiled libturnstile0
# apt install runit-service-seatd

(5) install my proven Openbox desktop
no display manager – just xinitrc | no pipewire – pure alsa
This setup should work with all window managers.
Desktops do not work. They all need active dbus daemons, whereas this setup uses libdbus-1-3 only.

(6) Power Management
For power management I use acpid, xset and the script suspend_if_idle (combined with i3lock and kdocker).
[https://gitlab.com/antiX-Linux/antix-go … type=heads]

(7) use lxterminal as pseudo gui
i.e.; obsession is crippled, lxsession needs polkit
As workaround in the openbox menu I use commands like the following:

<execute>lxterminal --geometry=39x4 --title=PowerOff -e bash -c "echo -- ???_PowerOff_??? __ [ENTER] = yes --; read line; (openbox --exit && sudo poweroff); echo read line"
<execute>lxterminal --geometry=90x32 --title=clamscan_Downloads -e "clamscan -v -r ~/Downloads; echo '<Enter> to Close Terminal'; read line"

So far I have found a solution for all my software needs within this setup.
The system is light, fast and stable and maybe a little more secure than standard.

I had to create one single dummy for pkexec, because gparted as dependency of refractainstaller-gui demands it. Of course pkexec is not really needed. Gparted starts as well with 'lxsu' or 'su-to-root -X -c'.

An extra benefit: The limitations have inspired me to find better alternatives to standard apps.
Example: I use SQLiteStudio instead of the bloated LibreOffice-Base.

Linux-libre works well, but I prefer the Devuan kernel for the option of non-free-firmware.
So far xorg has not caused any problems. Therefore I have not yet tested xlibre. It is in the antiX-26 repo. '#apt install -s xlibre' does not show any problems, but all the xserver-xorg-input-* packages will be removed.

screenshot runit-service-manager https://postimg.cc/RqQnGVvg

screenshot #apt install xlibre https://postimg.cc/kDFtwX7f

screenshot openbox desktop https://postimg.cc/mhNFV2TS