At the boot menu, press 'e' to edit the boot entry. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the linux line and add the word, nomodeset to the line. Then ctrl-x to boot.

No, I haven't seen that except when I was trying to boot to console. You should not need to log in to the desktop - it should happen automatically.
It's an isohybrid image, so anything that just copies it bit by bit to the whole device should work. I don't know what Mint or Rufus does, but if Rufus needs to know that it's for uefi, then it's probably doing something about that, and it should not. If you have a running linux, you can just use dd.

Please check the following commands:

tty          #which tty are you connected to?
ps ax |grep slim       # is the display manager running?
sudo runlevel
cat .xsession-errors
sudo less /var/log/Xorg.0.log    # look for lines starting with EE

Try ctrl-alt-F7 (maybe F8 or F9) to see if that gets you to the desktop.

If slim is not running, try starting it:

sudo service slim start

Check the sha256sum to make sure the download was good.

$ sha256sum devuan_jessie_1.0.0-RC2_amd64_uefi-live.iso
ac38f0c7d983f8ce93f7b261274fef30823022707b96fc1c09f6b9a1b0c3709d  devuan_jessie_1.0.0-RC2_amd64_uefi-live.iso

You'll get that if root is logged in on console or in a root terminal or if you're running some app as root.

The debootstrap command left me without a kernel or bootloader, so it was necessary to mount those things (didn't really need /dev/pts) and chroot into the target to install grub and linux-image. While there, I also created a root password. There's no way I could have rebooted to do those things in the installed system.

Refracta isos have included devuan debootstrap since some early version of devuan debootstrap. I just re-tested it with a current refracta iso. I did not give it a URL, and it pulls from packages.devuan.org. I stopped at "I: Base system installed successfully" (haven't chrooted in and installed bootloader yet.) Looks to me like it works as it should.

Download a refracta live-iso and boot it from CD or USB on the computer you want to install. Instructions almost identical to what's below are in /home/user/debootstrap_devuan
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … isohybrid/

Create partition
Format partition
Mount the partition and run debootstrap. You might be more lenient with the excludes. Just excluding systemd-sysv should be equivalent to using one of the devuan_jessie installer isos.

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt   # replace sdb1 with correct drive and partition
debootstrap --arch i386(or amd64) --exclude systemd,libpamsystemd,systemd-sysv,libsystemd0 jessie /mnt

If you have custom configs or other special files, you can copy files to the new system.
(example:   cp /boot/grub/splash.png /mnt/boot/grub/)

Mount some things so you can install the grub bootloader.

mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts

Chroot into the installed system.

chroot /mnt

Install software, edit configs, *create root password*, create user, install a kernel.

Still in chroot, install the bootloader and create the boot menu, then exit the chroot.

grub-install  /dev/sdb   # replace sdb with correct drive
update-grub
exit

Unmount stuff.

umount -l /mnt/dev/pts
umount -l /mnt/dev/
umount -l /mnt/sys
umount -l /mnt/proc
umount -l /mnt

That's all. Reboot.

Maybe yes, maybe no. You can install them, but sometimes getting them to work without a reboot is difficult. And of course, if you reboot the live session, you lose any changes. I didn't know you could install debs with synaptic. Thanks for that.

The regular installer isos have the wireless firmware, and you can choose to install it or not. That didn't work in beta2, but it's fixed in RC. The desktop-live and minimal-live don't have any wireless firmware installed or available, unless you have a network connection already. (catch-22). There's a good chance the final live isos will have wireless firmware. I don't know what the best way to do it is.

Here's a list of the wireless firmware packages that I pack in the Refracta isos. It's all of the ones I could find, but I haven't checked lately to see if there are more. I was able to install all of them in devuan without having to agree to a EULA with the exception of one - the ipw2x00.

b43-fwcutter_1%3a019-2_amd64.deb
b43-fwcutter_1%3a019-2_i386.deb
firmware-atheros_0.43_all.deb
firmware-b43-installer_1%3a019-2_all.deb
firmware-b43legacy-installer_1%3a019-2_all.deb
firmware-bnx2_0.43_all.deb
firmware-bnx2x_0.43_all.deb
firmware-brcm80211_0.43_all.deb
firmware-intelwimax_0.43_all.deb
firmware-ipw2x00_0.43_all.deb
firmware-iwlwifi_0.43_all.deb
firmware-libertas_0.43_all.deb
firmware-linux-nonfree_0.43_all.deb
firmware-myricom_0.43_all.deb
firmware-netxen_0.43_all.deb
firmware-qlogic_0.43_all.deb
firmware-ralink_0.43_all.deb
firmware-realtek_0.43_all.deb
firmware-ti-connectivity_0.43_all.deb
firmware-zd1211_3.0.0.56-3_all.deb

And here are the package names for installing with apt.

b43-fwcutter firmware-atheros firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43legacy-installer firmware-bnx2 firmware-bnx2x firmware-brcm80211 firmware-intelwimax firmware-ipw2x00 firmware-iwlwifi firmware-libertas firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-myricom firmware-netxen firmware-qlogic firmware-ralink firmware-realtek firmware-ti-connectivity firmware-zd1211

WOW! Code boxes that don't break my line. Nice. Thanks to whoever did that.

Edit: I would guess that the most common ones are atheros, iwlwifi, realtek and broadcom (all the ones that start with b). The ralink is another realtek. I have one of those on a pci card.

Some of them are from udev, and yeah, they will be there on a fresh install.

install syslinux-common

I will have more to say about core and base packages. Look in live-sdk/lib/libdevuanskd/config, but don't mess with them. What you see there is what gets added to the initial debootstrap install.

sudo is written into the scripts in a few places, so it won't really work to use su.

The easy way to get sudo is to add your user to the sudo group.

adduser <username> sudo

APPENDIX

This appendix is not complete. It focuses on the elements used in the example blends.
See live-sdk/lib/libdevuansdk/doc/ for more.

VARIABLES

`vars` and `arrs` are global arrays holding other global variables and arrays.
this is required for `zuper` and helps a lot with debugging. if you declare new
variables or arrays, add them to `vars` and `arrs`, respectively.

Built-in variables:

Most of the built-in variables are not required to be in your config file. Add them if you want to override the default settings.

blend_name
    Give your blend a name. You need it for the name of the blend file and for the directory that holds all of the files used in the blend.

os
    default is "devuan" Changing this will affect the default image name. If you change it to os="$blend_name"
    you can have separate tarballs and bootstrap directories for each blend.

release
    default is "jessie"  This will affect the build. NOTE: see special instructions for ascii.

version
    default is currently "1.0.0-RC"

arch
    whatever arch you use in the command 'load devuan <arch> <blend>'
    For a live-CD, choices are i386 or amd64.

image_name
    default is "${os}_${release}_${version}_${arch}"

username
userpass
    These get used with the add-user function.

rootcredentials
    default is root:toor

i386flavor="586"
    default i386 flavor is 686-pae. Use this variable if you want a 586 kernel.

section
   sections of the repo. for adding in /etc/apt/sources.list. separate them
   with whitespaces. default is "main".

Additional variables used in example blends:

blend_vers -
    this only exists in the blend config file and is used for the image name.

default_shell
    this only gets used in the blend file (chsh)

efi_work
    This is a directory where efi boot files get made. I'm not sure where it will end up, but it will appear in another example.

ARRAYS

core_packages
base_packages
    These are part of the sdk that you should not need to change.

extra_packages
    List of additional packages that you want in the build.

custom_deb_packages
    Packages you want installed from the .deb packages you put in your blend directory. Only the packages that are listed will be installed.
    If there are i386 and amd64 versions of a package, both files can be present, and the list needs to be edited to use the right package
    for the arch you're building.

purge_packages
    Anything that gets installed that you want removed.

FUNCTIONS

Functions used in the example blends
ordered according to build_iso_dist. (in live-sdk/lib/libdevuansdk/zlibs/helpers)

blend_preinst
    add user must happen before custom boot menu is created

iso_setup_isolinux
    sudo cp -rav "$BLENDPATH"/isolinux-overlay/* binary/isolinux/

iso_write_isolinux_cfg
    custom boot menu

blend_postinst
    iso_make_efi
    install-custdebs
    copy rootfs-overlay
    blend_finalize

iso_squash_strap
    mksquashfs:        -noappend -comp xz -Xbcj x86 || zerr

iso_xorriso_build
    -eltorito-alt-boot -e boot/grub/efiboot.img -isohybrid-gpt-basdat -no-emul-boot \