I hear you. You made your point (rather dramatically) and I will now butt out.  But before I go, I have a suggestion.  Could you please put [ code ] tags around all the c/p from the terminal like this?  There's even a point and clicky menu above the input box to help you do it.

# deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_netinst]/ ascii main non-free

# deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_netinst]/ ascii main non-free

deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main non-free contrib
deb-src http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main non-free contrib 

Yes.  antofox maintains MATE for Devuan.

@colby . . . you should not have any packages installed directly from the Debian repos.  Doing so could really break your your system.  Packages from the Debian repos are pulled by amprolla via a redirect that filters out incompatible packages.

The following network-manager packages are available in the ascii repos:

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pk … ease=ascii

The mate packages, unless they are very new, should also be available on the Devuan repos.  I let you do your own searching.

Server not found

Firefox can’t find the server at deve22%20backgrouind.

Yada Yada

Here's the magic incantation.  Thought this early description of how amprolla works might be an interesting example:

[img=image-description]url-to-image[/img]

Or if you want a thumbnail

[url=url-to-full-image][img=image-description]url-to-thumbnail[/img][/url]

Maybe xrandr?

snapd is on the banned package list for systemd dependency.  So no you wouldn't be able to install snaps on Devuan.  Unless, of course, you adopt and maintain that package to remove the dependency from release to release.

Have you read the Release notes?  I suspect something is amiss with the backend combo needed for your setup.

Start with backports and work your way further from ASCII. Be prepared that it may or may not go smoothly.   Not much has been done on beowulf yet.

Have you checked ASCII backports?  Maybe you could package it yourself if all else fails.  At least they aren't on the list of banned packages so that's a good start.

The recommended sources are defined here:
https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list

deb.devuan.org is a pool of mirrors that are all synced to pkgmaster.

The maintainer of that wiki will hopefully be changing that presently .

Patience is a virtue.