Yes they truly have gone downhill in that regards, though it is not the first time they have dropped an arch. With mostly the same reaction seen here every time as it happens. Same with the systemd garbage they foist onto their users forgetting the one tool for every action keep it simple *nix philosophy. While it expands ever more into every god damn part of the system with each release. So the Microsoft plants in Linux can slowly gain more control over ever f'n thing done on those systems. They don't even hide the agenda anymore and Debian still goes along with it. Here in a couple of days it will be four months (according to the Ubuntu changelog for the fix) since they ship a broken KDE that will not connect to a samba share at all. Despite the fix being in Ubuntu for all of those months and all it is, is a simple re-compile of the Ubuntu packages to fix it as they are binary compatible now that will install and work on a Debian based system. Having seen it in the past I have no doubt that they will ship those packages in that same broken state with Trixie when it goes out the door..

Ah I was wondering if you had done the copy the iso to the install drive many do and you did not. That is same error I got when trying to use the installer. Save yourself the wasted time and effort use an installer that works a Debian one. Then convert the install to Devuan using the instructions they give for doing it that work perfectly fine when starting with that as a base to get it on the box. There are very few changes made from a stock Debian to this operating system. The main one being removing the systemd infestation from it and installing sysvinit.

You would download the both and compare the files. All that matters is the system thought there was a change and displayed  the normal message for that change. You see it every time the . release updates go from the 12.7 to 12.8 for instance you get to see it. Now I scroll back the old version last update was in July of 2023 definitely a few version . changes in that period of time thus the reason for the message being displayed.

It is only or should only be displayed when the base-files package is updated and the information in the os-release file changes.

root@9600k:~# cat /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur/ceres)"
NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="6"
VERSION="6 (excalibur/ceres)"
VERSION_CODENAME="excalibur ceres"
ID=devuan
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/"
root@9600k:~# apt-file search /etc/os-release
base-files: /etc/os-release  
snip....

Check in your /var/log/apt/history.log to see if it (base-files) has been updated recently to tell if it should have displayed.

obviously never used a phone modem to connect to the internet. Those strange noises are the handshake as it is called when the machines negotiate the connection. A common sound heard in the old days before ethernet became the connection of choice and you had no choice but to use the telephone modem to connect. And got to connect at a whopping speed of ~4k/s for the fastest of them modems. See if one of them services have a test number to send to and of course get them to send another to confirm you can receive. If receiving then you can send.

I highly doubt that fax directory is in the path so will never be found.

zeus@9600k:~$ echo $PATH
/sbin:/home/zeus/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
root@9600k:~# echo $PATH
/root/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

Try.

ln -s /opt/epson/epson-pc-fax2 /usr/local/bin/epson-pc-fax2

To link it to a directory that should be in the path.  I think I have the link command correct, I have to look it up most times, if not try it the other way round.

Edit: can you link to the download page you got the file from so I can look at it, I do not seem to be able to find it.

Damn looks like you either need to edit the package or give up on the fax in it. I would think there is not a lot times you need a fax machine.

Edit: Another option is just extract the package and manually move the files to where they would normally be installed. I would think the systemctl is just restarting the CUPS daemon for it to find the new .ppd file(s) is should probably be installing, plus maybe a binary for the fax function.

Yes as has been pointed out you set the time in the BIOS/UEFI to the offset from UTC for your time zone. For instance in mine it is set to 4 hours less than UTC as my offset is -4 this makes everything work properly when the systems use UTC as most all *nix systems use it, like Linux, the BSDs & MacOS. Only Windows usually defaults to using local time as the multitude of postings of "why does my clock change when dual booting" can attest to.

That is not what is needed, we need to see the contents of the /etc/apt/sources.list file to confirm the correct lines in there.

# normal devuan sources
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

You should see a line similar to what I have above listed for the main updates, then the daedalus-updates & daedalus-security on their own lines in the file too.

From my install notes when I seen this come through.

SU changes not noticed here but may be in future so may as well set it up.

Changes in su
- The behavior of su has changed. Use 'su -' to get root's path or use
   the full path to commands if you use only 'su'.
    - There are several ways to get the old behavior. The easiest is to
   edit /etc/default/su to add the line:

    ALWAYS_SET_PATH yes

root@9600k:~# cat /etc/default/su
cat: /etc/default/su: No such file or directory
root@9600k:~# nano /etc/default/su
root@9600k:~# cat /etc/default/su
# Added to always have the PATH set for su.

ALWAYS_SET_PATH yes

You might want to create that file on your installs and install the lovely little program apt-listchanges which tells you thing like this when updating your packages..

Well just chain them together like any other commands you can do.

update-rc.d cups enable; update-rc.d bluetooth enable; update-rc.d cups-registryd enable

zeus@9600k:~$ ls ; pwd ; whoami
bin      Documents  mbox   Pictures  rtorrent  Templates
Desktop  Downloads  Music  Public    src       Videos
/home/zeus
zeus

That will execute each command one after the other when used on the command line, like I show above.