Well, as I see it, the biggest issue is that you used the CD, which gives you a system that most people would consider incomplete (like inactive shutdown buttons). Please don't file a bug report on that fact. We know the CD sucks, but it's useful if you must install without a network and you want a smaller download than the dvd or the desktop-live.

Crunched text and no button outlines: That sounds like a couple of the new gtk3 features. (gtk3 sucks worse than the CD).

I had a better upgrade experience using a refracta iso. The audio works (alsa only, no pulseaudio). There's no automounting usb drives or even popup icons when you plug one in, but that's because refracta doesn't have gvfs installed. (You might want to check for that). I use pmount for external drives, and that still works. Video (camera) works. I haven't tried watching a video file yet. I'll have to install vlc and check it. That's what I normally use, and it's known to be a little flaky.

Here's something that might work for rsyslog if you're ok with experimenting and possibly hosing your system. Install the version in jessie-backports. I did it this morning on a minimal installation and it seems to work. It should upgrade properly when rsyslog in ascii is ready.

For the power buttons, make sure you have installed policykit-1 consolekit libpam-ck-connector and upower. (Hope I didn't forget any). If that doesn't work, search the forum for any of those package names and you'll find some discussion.

There's a 'stay logged in' option? Guess I need to check my settings again. I'm in the habit of highlighting my whole post and copying it to the clipboard. Been burned on timeout plenty of times and places.

I predict that this thread will go for some time as more people try it and as packages get fixed. OK, time for me to go back to making new refracta isos. (sorry, golinux, but the first ones will be no-X).

Yes, I saw that you did apt-get upgrade, but you made it sound like you did not let it run. If the dist-upgrade says there's nothing to upgrade, then I guess you are running ascii. But I don't know what the autoremove did. Why did you run that? Did it remove any of the packages that were retained?

703 actualizados, 0 nuevos se instalarán, 0 para eliminar y 433 no actualizados.
Se necesita descargar 202 MB de archivos.
Se utilizarán 16.5 MB de espacio de disco adicional después de esta operación.
¿Desea continuar? [S/n] 

***

703 updated, 0 new will be installed, 0 to remove and 433 not updated.
You need to download 202 MB of files.
16.5 MB of additional disk space will be used after this operation.
do you wish to continue? [S / n]

The correct answer is "Si". And then you'll need to do dist-upgrade, too. What error are you seeing?

Did you correct these errors yet?

N: Omitting the file "sources.list.odt" in the directory "/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/", as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Bypassing the file "sources.list.d" in the directory "/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/" because it has an invalid filename extension

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you moved sources.list.d into apt.conf.d by accidental click in a root file manager. Root file manager is very dangerous for that exact reason.

Move sources.list.d up one level into /etc/apt/ where it belongs. And if you haven't gotten rid of the mis-named files, get them out of there, too. (You can move them someplace safe if you want to keep them around.) Also, you might do well to edit system files with a plain text editor instead of libreoffice or whatever word processor you used.

Edit: almost forgot to say this: It looks like you're finished upgrading to ascii. I have no idea what happened with the dbus-user-session error.

Edit2: Make sure you don't have anything weird in sources.list.d, such as mis-named files or files that contain jessie sources. In fact, if there are any sources in there, comment them all out. The ones you have in sources.list are correct.

If you use the debian/devuan installer, you will install from the repository if you do a netinstall or from the media if you used a DVD image instead of a netinstall and you don't choose a mirror. If you use refractainstaller, you will install the live iso. If the live iso has grub-efi-amd64 installed, it will be bootable on uefi.

If the live iso does not have grub-efi-amd64 installed, you should install that package in the live system before you run the installer. When it asks where you want the bootloader, don't choose a location. The installer will handle adding the bootloader (or let you do it manually if you like working in a chroot terminal.) Another option is to include grub packages in your iso and install whichever ones are needed when you install to hard disk. Oh yeah, if you hack the live iso into an installer iso, I think the grub packages are already there in /pool.

I don't think you need to reinstall yet. Just stop using synaptic temporarily and you won't see that error.

Try

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

and lets see if we can get you back to it failing because of dbus.

That will work until synaptic is upgraded to a newer version. Then your edited .desktop file will be replaced. I solved that problem by making a separate .desktop file called synaptic-gksu.desktop. Make sure to change the Name field, because you will have two entries in your menu for synaptic. You need to be able to tell them apart.

SR, nope. It's a file, not a line.

Use a valid filename extension. (i.e. ".list" not ".lists").  Are you sure you're up for this?

You should not need the 'packages' repo. When I did the upgrade, I used only one line in sources.list:

deb http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii main

The problem with the upgrade is not in the sources, it's in the packages. To quote myself from above:

I sure hope this isn't your main system that you're trying to upgrade. Maybe you should practice in a VM or on a spare computer. Then you'll know what to expect.

I don't know what the best course of action is at this point. If you can figure out what's trying to pull in dbus-user-session, you might be able to avoid it. Or, you could install equivs and make a fake dbus-user-session like I did. Somehow, I was able to remove it afterward.

Any of the installer images and the minimal live will give you a minimal system. Only the desktop-live forces you to take the whole desktop. Uncheck everything (or everything except 'standard system utilities' and the tasksel window.

As I said above, replace rsyslog first.

Or maybe wait a few weeks.

gconf2.  Maybe you were thinking x because there's a problem with xserver, too. It won't run without a display manager. Oh, and speaking of that, there's a problem with the display manager. But you'll never know that until you get past the problem with rsyslog.

To OP and all the others who are itching to try ascii...

It's only been three weeks since devuan jessie went stable. Three weeks is not enough time to prepare the next release.

I think two of those three weeks were spent in recovery. Things are happnening now. The major blockers should be fixed soon. Meanwhile, a careful debootstrap install will work and so will a prepared upgrade (e.g. replace rsyslog first). Be prepared for breakage and know how to handle it.

The answer to this is, "Something must be wrong."

More information about what did not work and what error messages you got will result in a better answer to your specific problem.