Interesting. I thought at least chromium would be somewhat clean. Concerning FF my illusions were long gone. Just look at all the google related garbage RAS lets you disable and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. Not to mention google being the default search engine with URL bar integration to eat your typos and suggestions and what not.

OK, i see where you are coming from. Process separation was one of the recently hyped up FF features concerning improving security so i thought you were referring to that but mozilla's codebase being quite rusty can't be argued. Tbh i still see those safety nets somewhat as duct tape for the problem of functionality bloat in todays browsers. My hope is for Palemoon to try ironing out the warts of Mozillas codebase without adding new features left and right while staying usable (damn, i'd love to use a reasonable browser but with the websites nowadays it's hopeless) and yeah, i know, that's likely nothing more than wishful thinking.

Point taken even if script blocking imo shouldn't be listed here imo as it in fact stops a lot of exploits.

Guess i should have explained that a bit. RAS functionality goes way beyond simple randomization of user agents (and is one of the rare attempts to at least try do more than a halfassed job at it). It offers a wide selection of other options ranging from disabling WebGL, WebRTC, Canvas to manipulating caching, visited link CSS, clipboard events, DOM timing, localization, fonts. You are right it's more about privacy than security though. Sadly the plugin is pretty much dead as it's impossible to port to WebExtensions according to the author. Actually i am thinking of picking it up to provide updates for usage with Palemoon.

Nothing wrong with chromium (chrome on the other hand...). It's a solid product. I've actually considered switching to it too but i can't get used to the UI and it's lacking when it comes to plugins (the main reason i used to use FF).

Regarding security i don't see how process separation (i guess that's what you are hinting at?) is all that important though. While i'll have to agree that it's (at least used to be - i don't follow this all that closely) easier to turn an exploit into a compromise with FF we are talking about last line defenses when there is already major hole in the bucket.

With the switch to WebExtensions FF has lost it's appeal to me anyways. That's also where it made up points in the security department imo (is there anything even close to Random Agent Spoofer for chromium?). Palemoon is obviously a risky choice with it's tiny dev team and the little exposure it gets but atm there seems no real alternative when you are used to classic FF (i've been running classic theme restorer before they killed it with the WebExtensions switch).

Not sure what exactly is the problem but for me getting printers working always just came down to installing cups and adding the user to the appropriate groups.

No idea about that one sadly.

My experience in relation to non technical users and Devuan has been pretty good though. Even if switching people over from Mint has resulted in the occasional complaint about Devuan being minimalistic noone wanted to switch back stating they just loved the stability and the performance so much.

I don't really have an answer but do you really have to use the .deb file from nvidia? If not switching to the official Devuan version might help with your dependency problems.

I have my doubts. I don't know the exact inner workings of the installer but i am quite sure it installs the base system using debootstrap (or rather specialized version of it) which by default doesn't care about sources.list. The installer might be smart enough to get it's settings from there but again i doubt it. Also i am not sure sources.list even exists before /target is created (likely when debootstrap is run).

Yes, i guess thats (usually) the case.

Doubt it. It's unlikely Devuan currently has the spare resources needed to extend the life cycle beyond what's supported by Debian.

I am guess Devuan Jessie will be supported as long as Debian Jessie is supported but i am not 100% sure. An actual developer will probably chime in soon and give you a definitive answer though.

Pretty sure you don't need to do anything.

Did you install xserver-xorg-legacy and set  needs_root_rights=yes in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config?

Exactly. This is how it was and how it is right now. I just remember a brief timespan where adding backports actually resulted in apt wanting to upgrade my whole system to backports versions if available and i had to use pinning to keep it in check. Not sure if it was something i broke though. At some point it just worked again like we are all used to.

Yeah, once the system is booted it's up to the OS to use it's own settings. My guess is the kernel by default simply doesn't bother changing the resolution and just uses whatever grub has left behind. Way later console-setup kicks in and maybe changes stuff a bit. Just had a quick look and /etc/default/console-setup seems to have a VIDEOMODE option too. Not really sure what it does as i just use it to set an oldschool ascii friendly font. Besides all of that would happen way after the kernel boot messages are done anyways.

Sorry, i hate coming across as a smartass Anyways, i also hope there will be a satisfying solution.

Yeah, i'd try what emanym said. Get grub to use a higher resolution can be a bit annoying but i've done it in the past (sorry forgot the exact combination of settings) so it should be possible.

As for boot messages i'd try editing /etc/default/grub to remove quiet from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and also run update-grub.