Many thanks, highly appreciate your effort!

Even if the article might be dated, the major selling message "software freedom, your way" is in conflict with the installer's behaviour (or its debconf priority). I realized that the current policy is different from Debian (they only have these explicitly unofficial non-free isos but do not ship non-free firmware in their base distribution), and this makes me sad. However, I know that some users don't care about non-free firmware and, thus, I partially understand that the Devuan devs might argue for shipping non-free firmware by default. Still, I can't understand why the user is asked about enabling/loading it only in expert install mode. This is definitely not software freedom "my way".

Not sure how this is implemented, but personally, I find it unacceptable to enable these sources without asking the user for confirmation first (is this really the case?). I was also rather  disappointed to find these repos enabled by default in the embedded builds.

After spending some time with trial and error, I am able to give the answer myself. It is possible to use the armmp-lpae kernel from stable (or if the board is too new like in my case - from backports). Just check whether your board is included or not in the dtbs-directory of the stable kernel e.g. here: [https://packages.debian.org/stretch/arm … e/filelist]).

Proceed as follows (assuming you don't use a separate /boot partition and everyhting is on /dev/mmcblk0p1):

apt-get -t ascii-backports install linux-image-armmp-lpae
cd /boot
mv boot.scr boot.scr.ORIG
mv boot.cmd boot.cmd.ORIG

Now adapt your boot.cmd.ORIG and adapt the paths/add a line for the initrd. In my case:

setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootwait panic=10 ${extra}
load mmc ${devnum}:${partition} ${kernel_addr_r} vmlinuz
load mmc ${devnum}:${partition} ${fdt_addr_r} boot/dtbs/${fdtfile}
load mmc ${devnum}:${partition} ${ramdisk_addr_r} initrd.img
bootz ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr_r}

Then install u-boot-tools:

apt install u-boot-tools

And create an updated boot.scr:

cd /boot
mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr

On the next reboot, the kernel you previously installed should be booted (the hardcoded kernel does not hurt as it resides in a different path, but you can wipe it away if it bothers you). Verify you are running the backport-kernel with uname -a:

root@devuan:~# uname -a
Linux devuan 4.18.0-0.bpo.1-armmp-lpae #1 SMP Debian 4.18.6-1~bpo9+1 (2018-09-13) armv7l GNU/Linux